Young tutor loved her job at community school
LA LOCHE, SASK.— Daven Janvier was looking dazed as he stood outside the school where Marie Jaqueline Janvier was shot, near a makeshift memorial of candles placed in the snow.
Daven, who identified himself as the brother of the 21-year-old teaching assistant killed in Friday’s mass shooting in La Loche, said they both lived at their grandmother’s house, and that a part of him is still expecting her to come home.
“I kind of feel like she’s out there. I probably think, she’s coming back.”
He said Marie loved her job as a tutor at the La Loche Community School, and was dedicated to her students. “She wouldn’t miss a day,” he said. He described Marie as a gifted teacher, and said he had been hoping she would show him how to get a good education, as she had done, so that he could find work and leave La Loche, a remote community 600 kilometres north of Saskatoon.
Marie Janvier’s friend, Ashton Lemaigre, said Marie, who had graduated from the school two years earlier, loved her job, was kind and patient with kids and talked about getting her teaching degree someday.
Deegan Park, her boyfriend of three years, said he would have given up the rest of his life just to spend another year with her.
“I grew up not a good guy, but she turned me right,” Park told The Canadian Press. “She was that much of a great person to turn me right, from all the wrongdoings I used to do . . . She was a fantastic person.”
Daven Janvier said he attends classes at the school but wasn’t there when a gunman opened fire shortly after 1 p.m. Friday, killing two staff, including Marie, and injuring seven.
He said that he didn’t believe Marie knew the person accused of the murders well and he had “no clue” why someone would want to harm her.
“It’s really unexplainable. I just can’t believe it that she’s gone,” he said. Maybe it’s just meant to be. Maybe just God wanted her back because she’s beautiful.”