Eleven students and two staff members from the Mennonite Educational Institute Secondary school in Abbotsford went up to Whistler on Friday for a day of boarding and skiing. The plan was to spend the day on the slopes and meet up at 3 p.m.
When the time came, everyone turned up, except one.
A search was launched, and later that night crews found a 14-year-old boy at the bottom of a large cliff. Ski patrol members gave the teen CPR, but couldn’t save him.
“There are people that pray, and this is a time that we would ask for that,” said Vijay Manuel, head of schools for MEI. “That you would pray in particular for a family that is trying to come to terms with an empty bedroom, you know?”
It’s not clear how the boy died, and Manuel said the school doesn’t want his name released yet.
Manuel said the school has brought in grief counselors to help students, staff, and parents as they try to process the boy’s death.
He said the response from the MEI community has been powerful since the teen died.
“There’s a response from the community of love and care for this student, and for his family, and it just speaks volumes about the kind of person that the student was,” Manuel said. “We love him and the family.”
With files from CTV Vancouver’s St. John Alexander
