La Loche school shooting: staff honoured with landmark namings

Two landmarks now honour the lives of Adam Wood and Marie Janvier – the staff members slain during the La Loche school shooting nearly two years ago.

Wood, 35, was a teacher from Ontario who worked at the northern Saskatchewan village’s Dene high school. Janvier, 21, was a teacher’s aide at the school and was from La Loche.

Janvier Point is situated on Saleski Lake, north of La Loche. Adam Wood Memorial Landing is along a creek east of the village.

Wood is remembered as an outdoorsman who frequented a spot he and his friends called “The Landing” – a wooded area beside a creek that was a great place for a campfire, according to a provincial government news release.

Janvier is remembered as a caring and compassionate person who loved helping others, the release stated.

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In January 2016, a teenaged gunman opened fire at a home and the high school in the community. His name cannot be published because he was under 18 at the time of the rampage.

The shooter injured eleven people, fatally wounding Wood and Janvier while they were trying to help students.

Brothers Dayne Fontaine, 17, and Drayden Fontaine, 13, also died.

A judge is expected to sentence the gunman as a youth or an adult in February.

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The staff members were nominated by the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation (STF) and Ministry of Education through Saskatchewan’s GeoMemorial Commemorative Naming Program.

“Through honouring their memory in this way, we hope that it brings a small measure of comfort to the families, friends and communities affected by this tragedy,” Gene Makowsky, parks, culture and sport minister, said in the release.

Letters of support for the landmark naming came from teachers, the Northern Lights School Division, the Northern Area Teachers’ Association, the STF and the Ministry of Education.