COALDALE, Alberta, Canada (BP)–“Don’t come into work today. There’s been a shooting,” Heidi Hann’s supervisor told her in a telephone call the afternoon of April 28.
“For about two seconds I thought he was joking,” Heidi said, and then, with devastating certainty, she knew it was true.
Heidi is a part-time janitor at W. R. Myers High School in Taber, a small town about 170 miles southeast of Calgary, the site of the first shooting death of a student in a Canadian school in 20 years. She works at the school to support herself while studying at the University of Lethbridge, about 25 miles away.
One week earlier she and others in her community joined with people in the United States, Canada and the world who were shocked at the violence at the school in Littleton, Colo. where 15 people died in a school massacre.
She is a member of Coaldale Baptist Church, 20 miles from Taber. The Coaldale church is the closest Baptist church to Taber, a predominantly Mormon community.
Heidi said area students had been interviewed by local news media after the Littleton tragedy and asked, “Could it happen here?”
Many people initially thought, as Heidi did, “This doesn’t happen in Canada.” But, she noted, “Then kids said maybe it could happen in Calgary or Edmonton (the two largest cities in the province of Alberta),” She added, “Some students said, ‘It could happen here.'”
She knew Jason Lang, the student who was killed. She also knew his friend, Shane Christmas, who was wounded and is still in the hospital with a bullet wound near his spine. Knowing the teachers and students in the school where this tragedy happened has had a life-changing impact on Heidi.
“Even though this is terrible, God is still in control. He will use this to achieve a purpose. I don’t know what that is, but I trust him.”
Her pastor, Dwayne Bartley, heard about the tragedy immediately because he is a chaplain with Coaldale police and fire departments and emergency services.
On the Sunday following the shooting, Bartley told his congregation that he had tried to make sense out of the situation. Why did it happen? Although he did not have the answer, he told them the courage of the dead boy’s father did give the event meaning.
Lang’s father, pastor of St. Theodore’s Anglican Church in Taber, offered forgiveness to the 14-year-old boy who killed his son. The shooter’s name cannot be released because of Canada’s Young Offenders Act.
“If a man can lose his son and offer forgiveness,” Bartley said, “that man exemplifies God.”
Days after the event, Bartley said he has found a unique perspective on this tragedy. He said that people far away from the event are responding more negatively. But the family and friends involved who are Christians, although grieving, are taking the attitude, “Christ wants us to go on.”
