Kelvin: Courage, Truth and Right

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/06/2015 (3854 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What will their memories be of high school?

Grad, a first girlfriend or boyfriend, something new they learned, a teacher that influenced them or the day police came to put up the yellow tape?

To the few students and teachers who witnessed it to those who knew the victim or accused, what happened on Tuesday will stay with them forever. The same is true for other students and staff who saw or heard about the aftermath; the yellow tape, police officers and paramedics, the forensic specialists carefully gathering evidence to be used in court.

This is the kind of stuff these young high school students have only seen on TV or the movies, or in another part of the city where this kind of violence is supposedly more common or normal.

Not at Kelvin. Not in River Heights.

To many of us who went to Kelvin, we like to think that this kind of violence is the antithesis of what we experienced.

Back then, back in the 70s, life at Kelvin was more innocent, or so we like to believe.

Our time was so much better, or so we like to believe.

We didn’t have the drugs, or I guess more accurately the type of drugs, that kids have such easy access to today. They have Molly and B.C. Bud. We had hash and bennies when a friend’s older brother scored.

We didn’t have the violence, the type of violence that’s now so seemingly acceptable in pop culture, the type of violence that’s seen as the only solution rather than something to eschew.

Or so we like to believe.

A day I remember as a student at Kelvin is the day a young man, who’d been mercilessly bullied, opened a window of his Kingsway home and armed himself with a pellet gun, the idea being to shoot those who had tormented him as they left school.

On this day no one was hurt, someone intervened, but the young man never returned to Kelvin.

We also like to think we were smarter and that nothing ever bad happened to us, but I don’t think anyone I went to high school with will forget the night in October 1977 when after a dance a speeding car left Wellington Crescent and wrapped itself around a tree, killing four students.

William Parker, the then chief medical examiner for Manitoba, told an inquest a few months later that alcohol was the contributing factor in the deaths. Two other youths in the car were badly injured and remained in hospital for months.

Parker said three of the dead youths had blood alcohol counts in excess of the legal level, while the level of the fourth youth couldn’t be tested.

Police officers testified at the inquest that the bodies in the front seat were so badly mangled they couldn’t determine who the driver was–that’s how fast the car was going when it hit the tree.

I always look for that tree whenever I travel down Wellington Crescent.

In the media coverage the day of the stabbing death, a Grade 12 student told the Free Press that the school sees a “major incident” almost every year now.

“I think it’s just kind of the character of the school,” he said. “You’re going to have to expect it going in, and you have to be aware that you’re potentially getting into some dangerous situations if you’re dealing with the wrong people.”

As parents you send your kids to school thinking they’ll be safe, that they’ll make the right decisions and avoid the mistakes you made when you were their age.

You hope that they’ll succeed and graduate and go onto something in life in which they will be happy, that they will prosper and even be better than you.

You don’t think they’ll be killed at school. What kind of cruel horror is that?

In my youngest daughter’s high school a young couple recently committed suicide, another completely incomprehensible tragedy. Through social media all students were encouraged to wear black to show their sorrow.

As a parent, you never want your kids to wear black to school, and you certainly don’t want them to witness a killing at school.

That’s not supposed to happen, or so we hope.