The survivors are all over 60 today. Likely, many are grandparents. They would have watched their own children go through high school, hopefully as carefree teenagers. Read More
The Brampton killer was carrying legally purchased guns — one was a birthday present — and was a law-abiding teenager until he killed without concern or mercy
The Brampton killer was carrying legally purchased guns — one was a birthday present — and was a law-abiding teenager until he killed without concern or mercy
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The survivors are all over 60 today. Likely, many are grandparents. They would have watched their own children go through high school, hopefully as carefree teenagers.
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But always, in the back of their minds, has been that balmy May day when a deranged student walked into Brampton Centennial Secondary School with two rifles in a guitar case, determined, in his own words, to kill two teachers and anyone else who got in his way.
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That was 50 years ago today — May 28, 1975.
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Noon News Roundup
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It wasn’t the first school shooting in my lifetime, but it was the closest to my heart. (The first was in 1959 at Ross Shepard High School in north Edmonton. I was in high school on the other side of the river.)
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Imagine Brampton, Ont., as it was 50 years ago, a town that actor Scott Thompson, himself a student at the school that day, described as the “flower town of Canada.” That was not irony. It was Brampton’s “official” designation.
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A typical middle-class city outside Toronto with a population of less than 235,000, it was home to then-Ontario premier Bill Davis and his family; his daughter attended the school.
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This was before Columbine, before École Polytechnique, before school shootings became so commonplace as to merit only passing interest, except from the National Rifle Association (NRA), always determined to stomp out any calls for gun control.
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The gunman, whose name I cannot forget but refuse to use, went into a washroom cubicle, unpacked the rifles and shot three other boys inside the washroom. Only one of them died: John Slinger, the 17-year-old son of my friends Berwick and Patricia Slinger.
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The assailant shot and injured 13 other students, then confronted Margaret Wright, a 25-year-old teacher who had phoned the shooter’s home and told his mother he had been skipping class. He shot and killed her, then turned the gun on himself.
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I was working at the Brampton Daily Times when the police radio crackled with the news. That day is etched in my mind — it remains the only time I have ever interviewed anyone while crying.
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John Slinger’s parents stood in the driveway of their home, preparing to drive to Kingston to tell their older son, Rob, a student at Royal Military College, what had happened. The college’s principal had kept Rob away from access to the news. I had two jobs — to comfort my friends for their shocking loss and to write about it. There are times when being a journalist gets too personal. This was one of them.