Nova Scotian students reach out to help Swiss school

Swiss Air Flight 111: 2 September 1998

-- by Lois Legge

The deaths of four Halifax County teenagers in a boating accident last year rocked the staff and students of a local school.

Now Sir John A. Macdonald High School in Five Island Lake is lending a healing hand to grieving students an ocean away.

Next week the school will send a "friendship package" to College du Leman in Geneva, which lost 16-year-old student Isabelle Jaegge when Swissair Flight 111 went down off Peggys Cove on Sept.2, killing all 229 aboard.

Poems, letters and mementoes of Peggys Cove will be among items in the package, part of a larger effort in which the Swiss school will model a memorial garden on the one in front of Sir John A.

Students and staff, with help from the St. Margarets Bay Gardening Club, erected a memorial garden in front of their school after three students and a former student died when an overcrowded boat capsized in Big Indian Lake in May 1997.

"It was horrific for the school," vice-principal Joanne Syms recalled Friday.

"Everything basically came to a halt because they couldn't find the bodies for quite a number of days and it was just ongoing. ... It was very difficult for the school to deal with."

But planting and tending the irises, lilies and shrubs in the garden has helped the friends, teachers and relatives of the young men deal with their loss, Ms. Syms said.

The school hopes such a tribute will do the same for Isabelle's peers and friends.

Students at the Swiss school contacted Sir John A. after hearing about the garden. They also had many questions about where Isabelle died.

Sir John A. students have helped their Swiss counterparts build a garden through constant telephone calls, Ms. Syms said.

Some items in the friendship package, such as rocks from Peggys Cove, will be used to help build the memorial. The package will be displayed in the school before it is sent to Switzerland.

The package also includes water from Peggys Cove, a model of the Sir John A. garden, a videotape of Peggys Cove, a tape of fiddling music by the students, a CD of Maritime music and a calendar with Nova Scotia pictures.

Sir John A. will add rocks from Peggys Cove to its garden in memory of the Swissiar victims.

Ms. Syms said the effort will show Isabelle's friends and peers that others have gone through a similar loss "and that they've coped with it and moved through it.

"But also I think it's great for the students there to understand that these kids have empathy and ... caring and feeling for them."

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