Bright kids and arty misfits hung out together, across subjects, grades and social groups. As far as Catholic schools go, it was something of an anomaly: it had the usual high academic standards and strict dress code, mixed with a decidedly bohemian vibe. I was a year behind her at Mary Ward Catholic Secondary in north Scarborough. What was the point in trying if no one acknowledged your efforts? And yet, instead of expressing her devastation, she told anyone who asked that she was perfectly fine-something she called her “happy mask.” More crime storiesĪ close observer might have noticed that Jennifer seemed off, but I never did. But she received none, and she wasn’t named valedictorian. She began cutting herself-little horizontal cuts on her forearms.Īs graduation from Grade 8 loomed, Jennifer expected to be named valedictorian and to collect a handful of medals for her academic achievements.
Some nights during elementary school, Jennifer would come home from skating practice at 10 p.m., do homework until midnight, then head to bed. They put her in figure skating, and she hoped to compete at the national level, with her sights set on the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver until she tore a ligament in her knee.
BRAIN DEAD FALLOUT 4 KILLER FULL
By elementary school, she’d racked up a trophy case full of awards. They enrolled Jennifer in piano classes at age four, and she showed early promise. They’d laid the groundwork, and their kids would need to improve upon it. Their expectation was that Jennifer and Felix would work as hard as they had in establishing their lives in Canada. He drove a Mercedes-Benz and she a Lexus ES 300, and they accumulated $200,000 in the bank. By 2004, Bich and Hann had saved enough to buy a large home with a two-car garage on a quiet residential street in Markham. They had two kids, Jennifer, in 1986, and Felix, three years later, and found jobs at the Aurora-based auto parts manufacturer Magna International, Hann as a tool and die maker and Bich making car parts. They married in Toronto and lived in Scarborough. Bich (pronounced “Bick”) came separately, also a refugee. Hann was raised and educated in Vietnam and moved to Canada as a political refugee in 1979. Bich Ha and Huei Hann Pan were classic examples of the Canadian immigrant success story.