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 RCMP Sgt. Mark Gallagher died in Haiti during last January’s killer earthquake. (Daniel St Louis/gallagherschoolhaiti.com) |
He never got to take the children their shoes.
It may have been the next important chore he was going to do.
But now, the small East Coast Canadian town he left behind is rallying to continue the wider work started by RCMP Sgt. Mark Gallagher, who died in Haiti during last January’s killer earthquake.
Gallagher, a married father of two, died in his residence in Port au Prince, as he was on a nine-month UN peacekeeping mission.
Just before he was killed, a family from Woodstock, N.B. — a peaceful community on the banks of the St. John River where Gallagher was based — had asked him to take a load of shoes to an orphanage in Haiti.
The family was on a waiting list to adopt a child there and the seasoned police officer agreed.
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Family friend and Woodstock schoolteacher Richard Blaquiere said Gallagher had assured his wife, Lisa Gallagher, during a last phone call that he was getting ready to bring the shoes to the kids.
Then the earthquake struck and he was lost.
While Blaquiere had met the officer a few times — Lisa Gallagher is a school superintendent — the sergeant’s loss became a wound to the entire town’s heart.
“I’ve gotten to know him more since he passed away,” Blaquiere explains to QMI Agency from his Woodstock home.
“What I found was a kind and generous man.”
Gallagher was originally from another New Brunswick community, but Woodstock views him as such a revered native son they have outdone themselves in an outpouring to Haiti.
Since January, Woodstock church groups have gone south to help, as well as local medical teams.
The couple Gallagher carried the shoes and promise for became the first Canadian family to adopt a Haitian child after the quake.
Now, helped along by others around the province, Woodstock is leading an effort to build a vocational school outside Port au Prince to commemorate Sgt. Gallagher’s life (gallagherschoolhaiti.com).
Thanks to the people of a heartbroken Canadian town, the school will take shape in the shattered Haitian town of Riviere Froide. If they can raise well over $1 million needed, it will be built on land where a school collapse killed 144 children and the destruction of a nearby church saw several nuns die.
With a proposed 15 classrooms, Blaquiere says: “No one I’ve approached has said, ‘I’m too busy to help'.”
It’s a tale of an entire Canadian town, proud of the man they sent off to a poor and needy place, he adds.
Now, he says, the community and province are determined to continue the officer’s journey for him.