Pam Hand, a driving force behind the memorial, stands on the grounds of the Brampton Centennial Secondary School last Saturday.Pam Hand
Victims of a 1975 high-school shooting and community members gathered on Saturday to witness the unveiling of a memorial aiming to serve as a source of healing and reflection.
The sculpture titled The Healing Place sits on the grounds of Brampton Centennial Secondary School, where the school shooting took place on May 28, 1975. On that day, 16-year-old Michael Slobodian brought two rifles to school and opened fire killing fellow student John Slinger and English teacher Margaret Wright.
Pam Hand, a driving force behind the memorial, was a 14-year-old Grade 9 student when she experienced the tragedy that day. We spoke with her to find out about the significance of this new monument.
Why was it important for the memorial to be built?
A few years ago somebody posted on a group Facebook page from our yearbook that had the expression, "On Wednesday 28 May 1975, we all learned to love each other just a little bit more." People began talking about their experiences that day for the first time in 38 years, some people told their stories on Facebook and it was very emotional and a group of us decided to get together at school at the anniversary of the shooting in 2012 and we just realized that none of us had healed fully and that we never had a chance to mourn or to pay our respects to the people that lost their lives, we'd just always held it inside and never really felt any sort of peace with it or had any finality. So we decided at that time that we would get together and start planning a memorial. It took a couple years, you know with funding and planning, and we contacted Mary Ellen Farrow who's an artist that works in Glen Williams. She came up with a beautiful design of the one bench with the person consoling another person and room for someone else to sit. She named it The Healing Place and at the ceremony on Saturday everyone was just in awe of how perfect it was.
What do you hope that this memorial/sculpture will bring to people, especially those who were affected by the incident back in 1975?
I hope it will give them an opportunity to have a place to go to just sit and reflect on their own feelings and emotions and I hope it will give them a sense that they are not in this alone and people still care. I felt the sense on Saturday and again at the reunion two years ago that we grieved as a community and that sculpture gives us a chance to have a place to go in the community to heal and to reflect on our feelings. And I think it's important too that people know that we are all struggling, that we are all still dealing with this and that our feelings are normal – this is how people do feel when things aren't dealt with. Even the student coming out of the school – it can even be a place for them if they are dealing with something traumatic or if they just want a place to sit and think. It might seem strange to people that haven't witnessed something like that or they haven't been through something like that but that feeling of just needing a place to pay your respects and to think is overwhelming.
Is there a symbolic meaning behind the sculpture of the two people embracing each other?
One person is bigger than the other person so I think what it tries to signify is that we were children back then, you know we were young, I mean 14-18 years old and it kind of symbolizes a person like a parent or teacher consoling a student perhaps, and the spot on the bench beside it is for comfort and that healing process, you don't have to sit beside it but that's what it kind of symbolizes. That, you know, the comfort and the healing that wasn't given back then due to no fault of the school board but just because that's the way it was. You can join the comfort now and The Healing Place is just such a perfect title because it is a place for healing.
Personally, is there a special significance that this memorial serves for you being someone who at such a young age witnessed this incident?
To me it's an acknowledgment that we as a community care about the lives that were lost and the people that were hurt and the people who were affected whether they saw it or whether it just affected them emotionally because it was our school or our town. It's just a symbol to me that we cared and we still care. And that it's okay if you are still struggling and that it's okay to reach out for help or to admit you need help. And it's okay to go there and just sit with your feelings. For the longest time, I felt like it wasn't okay and it felt like you were alone. It felt like nobody else was still hurting and that you were not right because you still were affected so greatly by something from 42 years ago. I retired from Peel Police after 30 years and I've learned a lot about post-traumatic stress and I've learned how important it is to talk about what happened and to get your feelings out. We were just kids. I was 14 years old when I witnessed what I witnessed and I've never really talked to anybody about it ever and it's very emotional. I found out things from people that I've known all my life on Saturday, that they have seen and dealt with. It's incredible really when you think of that time.
This interview has been condensed and edited.