This week marked 10 years since the tragedy in Mayerthorpe. For those of you that don't know, four mounties were killed there and one of them was my friend, Peter Schiemann.
I remember I was in medical school when I heard about the shooting. Someone from my class asked me if I knew the mounties who were shot and I remember scoffing at them that Alberta wasn't as small as people in Toronto think it is. Little did I know that the world was smaller than I thought. I remember being at the gym and looking up at the news and my feet stopped moving. How was it possible that I would know one of those four mounties that had been talked about all day? How was it possible that I would be staring into the face of an old friend in a red uniform?
For the next several days I watched the news and the funerals and the national outpouring of grief. Four brave young men affected our collective consciousness and it tore a little deeper because it was painted by the loss of innocence I felt that we weren't immortal anymore. And that the good guys didn't always win. The tragedy of treachery's triumph may happen in other countries but Dudley Do-right always gets his man.
In the coming weeks I drafted a letter to Peter's parents. You could see the toll it took to be the grieving parents for a country overwhelmed by this loss and playing that role seemed to make these men inadvertent figureheads and "larger than life" is no comfort to people missing the small moments with their children. I wanted Peter's mom to know how much he meant to me in the short time that we were friends. She wrote a beautiful letter back demonstrating a number of attributes I admired in her son.
In reading the news stories that have marked the 10 year anniversary of Mayerthorpe I came across an interview with Peter's dad. He talked about how much he wanted to remember more than the day that Peter died. That there were many beautiful years together with a wonderful son and that he wanted to remember that. So on this anniversary I want to remember Peter, not for the day that ended his life, but the day that he completely endeared himself to me.
Peter and I were in Concordia Concert Choir together. I was the little Mennonite girl in the group with a big liberal axe to grind, the feminist gay-rights activist. He was the kind-hearted pastor's kid, quiet in the shadow of his older brother, always with a smile on his face. We were both in first year together and despite my vocal outcries of all the things I felt the Lutherans were doing wrong (at my Lutheran school) we became friends. On choir tour we went to Concordia Ann Arbour. There was a guy that liked my "Ford" truck T-shirt (unbeknownst to him this was an inside joke at the time as I was dating a guy with the last name Ford). This guy was following me around campus until I ran into Peter who promptly soaked me head to toe with a Super Soaker. I then wrestled him to the ground and once I had him pinned asked if he would pretend to be my boyfriend for the weekend because this guy kept following me. Peter, with that fantastic grin on his face, wet in the mud and without struggle as I had clearly bested him at wrestling (or so I thought), obliged. He was a very sincere and caring "fake boyfriend" for the remainder of our time in Ann Arbour. The guy who liked my Ford T-shirt was even more smitten after he thought Canadian girls wrestled you to the ground in the mud to ask you out. He was sorely disappointed that I had betrothed myself to Peter.
Peter showed me gentleness and kindness when so many people at that time wanted to rein in this wild girl with the vocal leftist theology. We never talked about that. He never told me that he was worried about my soul or that I was clearly wrong and this was the laundry list of reasons why. He showed his faith through his tremendous compassion.
We lost touch after that. I focused on drama at Concordia and went on to the U of A and med school and Peter went on to join the RCMP which was a dream I remember him talking about even then. My fondness for him never faded though. I told Peter's mom I married a guy very much like Peter Schiemann. That his "fake boyfriend" attributes were something I wanted in my life in a very real way.
After his death and his tremendous bravery he still impacted me. I try to practice medicine as a "calling" the same way someone would be called to the ministry or to the RCMP. When I am afraid in my job I think of his amazing sacrifice and how he must have been scared but that he did what was right anyhow. In the fall someone said that if Ebola came to Canada they would never come to work and although I have seen death and the thought of Ebola scared me, in my heart I knew that I would never run like that. I would try to be as brave as Peter.
Imagine that in his short life on this earth he affected me so profoundly in such a short amount of time. Think of all the people he knew longer and how he impacted their lives. He was more than Mayerthorpe and so were all the other mounties that died that day. Their death is what we know of them as a nation but they lived and we honour their lives and the lives that they touched.
Rest well my friend. Thank you.
Ain't Got Time to Die
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