#dylan laboucan

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Hundreds turn out to mourn teen couple slain in northern Alberta

‘No one can rob them of the love they had for each other. No one can take that away.’

Dylan Laboucan was apologetic about how much he loved his girlfriend, Cory Grey.

“Sorry if I’m not making sense or my wording is bad, but I’m not a writer or anything like that. I’m just a guy who is crazy in love with you and would do anything to let you know that,” Laboucan wrote in a letter to Grey when the couple was celebrating their one-year anniversary.

It was to mourn the loss of this hopeful, young love that hundreds of people crammed into a school gym Friday in northern Alberta.

Laboucan, 17, and Grey, 19, were found shot to death days after they went missing from their home on Whitefish River First Nation on July 23. RCMP are investigating the deaths as homicides. Police have confirmed the young couple was targeted, but have yet to announce the arrest of any suspects.

The teenagers’ deaths have devastated the settlement of Atikameg, a small community 95 kilometres northwest of High Prairie, home to the Whitefish Lake First Nation, which also encompasses Whitefish River First Nation.

Nearly two weeks after their nightmare began, Laboucan’s and Grey’s families laid their children to rest Friday.

“All the answers won’t bring you back to me,” Grey’s mother, Nina, wrote in a letter read aloud during her daughter’s eulogy.

With tributes in both English and Algonquin Cree, the crowd of mourners was fierce in its remembrance of the teenagers.

“No one can rob them of the love they had for each other. No one can take that away,” said Len Laboucan, one of two officiates.

The service stretched for hours as prayers, songs, poems and letters memorialized the teens.

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[allthecanadianpolitics]

Slain Whitefish First Nation couple were 'wonderful kids' destined to lead their community

'We've had a lot of tragedy in Atikameg. And this is not like the other times,' says pair's former teacher

Dylan Laboucan was smart and gifted, a polite young man with a smile for everyone.

Cory Grey was strong and outgoing, a bigger-than-life young woman who simply would not allow tragedy to shape her destiny.

"They were going to be leaders in their community," said Eddie Sargent, who taught both teens at the reserve school in a tiny community north of Lesser Slave Lake in Alberta.

"They were going to find success."

Those bright futures went black, like someone flipped off a light switch, earlier this week, when someone shot and killed Laboucan, 17, and his girlfriend, Grey, 19, and dumped their bodies on two separate well sites on the Whitefish Lake First Nations reserve.

Sargent taught at Atikameg School from September 2009 until June 2014. He was principal during the last two years and is now chair of academics at Northern Lakes College in Slave Lake, where his two former students were registered to attend classes this fall.

The fact that both teens finished high school (Laboucan was the only member of his graduating class this spring) was "a big deal," Sargent said, given the odds stacked against so many Indigenous students in Canada.

"There's so many other issues that the students contend with, outside of school, that they have to overcome," he said. "That's why it's a big deal."

Many of the young people he taught, Sargent said, "have lived a lifetime of tragedies by the time they're 18 years old. Four of the students that I've coached and taught in Atikameg have been convicted of murder. That's not normal."

Laboucan and Grey, according to their families, friends and former teacher, were exceptional in many ways.

"They were never involved with drugs or drinking," Sargent said. "I think that's why it's so shocking to everyone. Everyone's thinking, 'How could this happen to Dylan and Cory?' They were not the type of kids who were ever involved in that world where something like this would happen to them.

"In Canada, a lot of the non-Aboriginal population has these stereotypes," he said. "These students were wonderful kids. They were wonderful, wonderful kids that were on the cusp of becoming independent and giving so much back to society. And they were taken away for absolutely no reason."

Laboucan got the top marks in math and science in his grade.

"He was a really, really gifted student," Sargent said. "He had the world in front of him. He was someone who was going to do very well in life."

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