School Protest Turns Deadly
Glennville: This small Ontario town is in shock and mourning after a high school protest turned deadly. Students protesting their school’s dress code were panicked when a gunman appeared and fired into the group who were gathering around the school’s flagpole.
The gunman was shot and killed by local police but not before he had seriously wounded the leader of the protest and Student Council President, Taryn Talbot. Talbot remains in hospital in hospital with unspecified life threatening injuries. A vigil outside the Hamilton hospital where Talbot was taken is being organized by Megan McEvoy, a classmate of the young woman. The gunman whose name has not been released is said to be the brother of a student who was part of a prayer group who had already gathered at the flagpole for their Friday service.
It is not known why the protesters chose to march to the flagpole but early reports suggest they believed the prayer group was staging a counter protest against the lax enforcements of the school dress code and the lack of support they believe is given to minority students from a fundamentalist congregation who have been bullied by some students. Arnie Beirholt, one of the students in the prayer group said, “[The Shooter’s] sister was attacked by some boys and they pulled off her cap. Nothing was done about it either. They said it was because she wasn’t on school property and it was after school. Nobody cares.”
Police had been informed of the planned protest by Glennville S.S. Principal David Veale so had been monitoring the action from their vehicle on the street. Veale stressed that the shooter was not a current student at the school. “This is a good school. It’s a real community school. This was not a school shooting. The shooter had dropped out of school several years ago,” he said. He added, “Our thoughts and prayers are with Miss Talbot and her family.” Neither Veale or Vice Principal Vic Greystone would comment on the alleged assault of the student wearing a prayer cap. Local constable Mike Miller expressed sadness that a young life was lost in the incident. “This is not the outcome we wanted but we could not take a chance. He had a gun.”
The shooter used a single shot 22 calibre rifle. It is the type commonly used by farmers to deal with nuisance coyotes.
Nora Kilbourne, Mrs. Kilbourne, to her classes put the paper down. This school shooting report would be fine for her Grade Eleven Communications class. They would deconstruct it and focus on the cliched language used to describe the incident, determine if the paper kept to factual reporting, use their imaginations to create character studies of the main people involved in the report so they could rewrite the story from the point of view of different characters and if time allowed, perhaps dramatize the protest. Students loved dramatizing especially if it involved some degree of chaos and violence. Some background on the cap-wearing girls would have to be given.(She herself knew little enough of those quaint sects.). Thankfully she was in Toronto, far enough away from the unfortunate incident that she could appropriate it. She was quite pleased to have the outline of several lesson’s planned during her preparation period. Life was really so much about perspective.