It wasn’t a school day, but the students were still there.
“He was so sweet, he was so genuine,” said friend Maryam Silim, a recent grad. “He would always go out of his way to help others.” In the past, community members say, these neighbouring schools had their issues, including fights, stabbings and a previous shooting. But the new school was meant to be a new chapter of sorts, both for its nearly 1,300 students and the wider community.
“It was around lunchtime and I was upstairs on the second floor of the old school in the academic resources office. That’s when our vice-principal announced the lockdown and we had to sit in the corner,” Ladak said, adding he remembered several lockdowns at the old school. Harrison said both he and the community supported amalgamating the two underused schools under one roof, with better and more resources for students.
Thompson, who lives a five-minute drive from David and Mary Thomson C.I. — the school is named for a pair of the earliest Europeans to settle in what would become Scarborough — emphasized this is not a neighbourhood that is “deficient.” The school, located near Lawrence Ave East and Midland Avenue, is nestled in a part of the city that is home to many immigrants and young people, and has a lower household income than the city average.