The Mississauga News
April 14, 2007
By Craig MacBride
Several St. Alfred Elementary School students have been noticeable by their absence the past few days.
Located on Havenwood Dr., in a quiet east Mississauga neighbourhood, the JK-Grade 8 school houses some 500 students. They’ve been haunted by thoughts of their missing schoolmates.
Most of the pupils will return.
Tragically, one will not.
John Pham, 10, died in hospital Wednesday night.
By now, most everyone knows the details of a school field trip gone horribly wrong.
The Grade 4 class aboard a bus that clipped a tractor trailer. The bus careening into the ditch that separates northbound and southbound lanes on Hwy. 410.
The truck driver, Pat Pringle, telling reporters, “I could see the little bodies flying around in there.”
Then, 25 children taken to William Osler Health Centre, two others – John Pham and a nine-year-old girl – to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Pham was in critical condition while the young girl was in serious, but not critical, condition.
Then, waiting.
By early Thursday morning, everyone knew John Pham hadn’t made it.
The young girl remains in hospital but is expected to survive.
Inside St. Alfred School, there was a prayer service attended by the senior students. In the afternoon, a service for junior students was held.
Throughout the day, a dozen members of the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board’s Tragic Events Response Team were at the school, counseling students and teachers, and taking over bus and recess duties for teachers.
Debra Lean, the Board’s chief psychologist, suggests parents speak to their children and find out where they are emotionally.
This is particularly important for students in Pham’s grade. It’s at that age when children can begin to understand death.
“These children in Grade 4, some will be quite sure of what happened, some won’t,” Lean said.
She added some students don’t understand what it means for someone to die.
“It’s not permanent. They don’t really understand the finality of it,” she said. “A young child will often look like they’re not grieving appropriately because they have a completely different understanding of what that means.”
That’s why, officials say, it’s important to speak to children about the accident.
“We’re all concerned. It’s just natural to feel that way, and it’s hard for children to understand the probability of horrible things happening,” said Lean. “Adults do, and they need to reassure their children.”
Meanwhile, outside the small brown-brick school, as rain fell from a grey sky, a wet Canadian flag flew at half-mast in Pham’s memory.
Nearby, half-a-dozen reporters, prohibited from crossing onto school property, stood on the sidewalk, hoping for someone to make sense of the story.
A tall order, an insurmountable one.
Most stories thrive on conflict. This one would be easier to explain if there was a place to point the finger, someone to blame.
Instead, for all involved, there was nothing but impotent rage and quiet misery.
A simple field trip gone wrong. An accident, impossible to predict, taking the life of a young boy.
“When a child goes out to school in the morning you expect him to come home at night,” said Mario Pascucci, school board trustee for the area. “This is tragic. It’s traumatic.”
The only conflict in this story is between the desires of people and the random nature of the world; or, for the spiritual, between the desires of people and the desires of God.
God, many in the Catholic school community believe, decided to call John Pham home.
There was a reason for it, said Christian Nwatarali, a priest at Sts. Martha and Mary Church. Death, he said, is not the end of life, but a transition.
“We believe God’s the author of life, and it doesn’t matter how long one lives, but how well one lives,” said Nwatarali. “It’s difficult not just for the parents, but for everybody who happens to know the child, but we have to raise our minds to God.”
On Thursday afternoon, John Pham’s family welcomed the News into their home.
A dry-erase calendar board kept track of important dates. Under April 11, in John Pham’s unsteady handwriting, were the words “Silver Creek,” the intended destination of that day’s field trip.
Above the words, he had drawn a school bus.
John’s parents, Anh and Lan, moved to Mississauga years ago from Vietnam to start a family. First, they had John, then recently a girl, Sofia, who was born with a facial disfigurement.
John had wanted to be a zookeeper, but after Sofia was born, he changed his mind.
“He wanted to be a doctor so he could fix his sister and other people with similar problems,” Anh said.
There’s nothing about the story that isn’t heartbreaking.
His parents showed off John’s bedroom. A baby’s cot sat beside the bed. John had given up his room because he worried his little sister was cold in her room.
Everything about this story makes one wonder if John Pham was too good for this world.
“Every child, a promise.” That’s the St. Alfred school motto.
It was chosen as a daily reminder to provide students “with skills, values and attitudes need to live a successful Christian life.”
It was also chosen as a reminder of the promise teachers make to keep the children safe.
On Thursday, that promise was broken. Not for a lack of effort or planning, but for lack of control. The children could not be kept safe simply because the world is not always a safe place. Accidents happen.
On Friday morning, photographs of John Pham were on the front pages of every newspaper, as were stories about the family’s decision to donate John’s organs.
Stories and debates about the merits of seat belts on school buses followed.
Memories of John, as told by friends and classmates, echoed.
Bruno Iannicca, chair of the Dufferin-Peel Board, continued to wrestle with what had happened.
“Accidents do happen,” he said. “If there’s any accident we’d want to avoid, this would be it…children are supposed to bury their parents, not the other way around.”
Accidents do happen.
The school board transports 30,000 students twice daily on school buses. There are hundreds of field trips each year.
One went horribly wrong, and now there’s only faith to lean on, if one can keep faith in the face of such a tragedy.
As Iannicca said after the accident, “You always appreciate your kids. It could’ve happened to any of the kids on the bus. Six years ago, it could’ve been one of my kids.”
After hearing of the accident, Iannicca just wanted to hug his own children.
It’s the only lesson in this story: a reminder to not take life or family or friends for granted.