Peers mourn loss at Malvern Collegiate
Teachers, students leave messages for 18-year-old victim Reese Fallon
She lowered herself onto the ground and, clutching a stick of chalk, scrawled “Tana Tana Tana” on the sidewalk.
Then, the girl with the bandaged knees, fresh blood leaking through the thick, white gauze, stood up and repositioned herself about a foot away. This time she wrote “fried chicken” in bold, white letters.
Fried chicken was “her favourite thing,” the girl said of her friend Reese Fallon, to two others standing nearby.
Fallon, 18, was killed Sunday when a lone gunmen opened fire on groups of people enjoying a summer’s night on the Danforth.
The girl with the bandaged knees, along with a clutch of others, spent more than an hour outside Malvern Collegiate Institute Tuesday afternoon, chatting, hugging and writing messages in chalk.
The “Tana Tana Tana” was an ode to another facet of Fallon’s cultural repertoire — a popular YouTube star.
Malvern Collegiate Institute, Fallon’s alma mater, opened for the day to offer support, comfort and counselling to the friends, faculty and staff she left behind.
The school’s library became a hub for mourners to meet with social workers and pat therapy dogs. Outside the school, teenagers, visibly shaken, sobbed and embraced. Some placed flower bouquets at the base of the flag that was flying at halfstaff. Others left notes. One message, printed on red paper, said: “the world was a better place with you in it. We will carry you in our hearts forever. Shine bright beautiful.”
Another message printed on the sidewalk in neat, bold lettering nearly spanned the length of the school. It read: “Love for all hatred for none”
Misty Saha, 17, a recent graduate in Fallon’s class, looked as if she had been crying.
She was supposed to be at the same dinner as Fallon on Sunday night, a celebration of a friend’s birthday, she said. The group was supposed to go for ice cream, but she couldn’t attend because she was out of town.
It wasn’t until the next day that Saha found out about the night’s tragic end, she said. And then, she could barely “process what was going on.”
“It could have been me, it could have been anybody else,” she said. Calling her friend “charismatic,” Saha said she and Fallon became close while working together on the prom committee.
They bonded over a shared desire to work with children. “Our personalities were pretty much alike,” said Saha, who will study at Queen’s University this fall.
Fallon wanted to be a “child’s nurse,” according to Saha, and was eager to start her degree at McMaster University.
Mark Steel, 39, a Malvern chemistry teacher, who taught Fallon, was among those who came to find comfort Tuesday in the school’s community. His wife set up a GoFundMe page hours after learning of Fallon’s death.
The goal is that the money earned will, each year, go to a Malvern graduate who embodies Fallon’s qualities and is entering a nursing program, he said.
Steel, who himself donated $500 to the GoFundMe campaign, said Fallon worked hard and pushed herself. “We thought a scholarship would be a good idea to keep her memory going.”
Anthony Parise, a Malvern English teacher who taught Fallon, stood among the students outside the school. He said that like the others, he too was struggling to understand the senseless violence.
All at once, he said, the community was thinking about Fallon and the positive impact she had on all of them.
And then, he said, “there’s this horrible feeling of loss and the unthinkable nature of how she was lost.”