N.B. city’s flags at half-mast, 10 years after van tragedy killed eight people
FREDERICTON — It was just after midnight on Jan. 12, 2008, when a 15-passenger van carrying the Bathurst High School boys’ basketball team lost control on a slushy highway.
An oncoming transport truck tore the van apart, killing seven teenage players and the wife of their coach — and brought a grief-stricken northern New Brunswick community to its knees.
“I had never seen anything like it. There was such profound and widespread grief throughout the community,” said John McLaughlin, the then-superintendent of the Bathurst school district, who added the tragedy brought messages of condolence from around the world.
“The tragedy of the loss of the promise of those young men, what they could have been and what they dreamed of. That just resonated with people everywhere.”