Pinetree Secondary School

Pinetree Secondary School: My telephone rang at 5 the next morning. It was my mother calling to say there had been an accident, and I knew from the tone of her voice that it involved one of my brothers. I discovered that the clich phrases were all based in reality: I went numb, my heart sank, and my blood ran cold all at the same time. We dont know for sure, because they still havent found him, my mother said. But the just told us that Michel was caught in an avalanche up at Kokanee, according to The Star. Part of me was certain that Michel was still alive. I just couldnt conceive of a world in which he wasnt and In November 1998, I spent a week as a substitute teacher at Pinetree Secondary School in Coquitlam, about a half-hours drive east of Vancouver. The class had been a good group of kids, and by weeks end I was sorry to leave them. After saying my goodbyes on Friday the 13th, I drove back to my apartment, had dinner, and went to bed. I fell to sleep unaware that earlier that day, I had lost my little brother Michel. Michel had been doing what he loved most when he died, backcountry skiing with friends in the Southern Interior of British Columbia. While I had been standing at a blackboard, an avalanche had swept my brother and one of his buddies into Kokanee Lake. They had been traversing the steep incline above the lake. His pal Andy managed to swim to shore, but Michel was just too far out. It had taken his other friends hours to dig themselves out and contact the Meanwhile, I had had a normal day, as had the rest of my family back east, as yet blissfully unaware of what had happened. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.