'I know one day, we will meet again'

The wail of sirens and the flashing of lights in downtown St. Paul drew the attention of curious drivers, out on the town during a still sunny May evening, with many swinging closer to the scene of the attention.

But as they approached the busy heart of downtown, they quickly realized this was no ordinary accident, no scene to stand by and watch.

Out of parked cars leaped frantic bystanders, who waved the oncoming vehicles away, screaming with their pointer fingers extended in the shape of guns, “They're shooting! Get away!&”

At a nearby school, children laughed and played on the park. But as news of the shooting on main street spread like wildfire, along with whispered rumours that a priest was killed, the children were called into the school that was immediately locked down, the outdoor sounds of laughter silenced.

***

Earlier that day, something had happened to set off John Quadros, the owner of a local health food store. He was a person described by several accounts as “angry,&” with a temper that was prone to flare up.

Knowing exactly what was going through his mind on the day of May 9 would be impossible, a mystery and an ache for the people left behind in the aftermath that Quadros left behind, as by the end of the night, he would be responsible for the death of two men - Father Gilbert Dasna, a priest originally from Cameroon, and himself.

“To me, he was an unhappy man. He was a man that was suffering,&” said Father Gerard Gauthier of Quadros. He, along with pastoral agent of the parish of St. Paul Cathedral Alice Corbiere, worked closely with Dasna in the church and in the rectory where Gauthier and Dasna both lived.

There seems to be no link between Quadros and Dasna, and no answer as to why Quadros would have shot the beloved priest.

“Because the shooter died, we don't have the answers - that question will never be answered,&” said Gauthier.

“At first you're angry,&” said Corbiere, shaking her head, of the events leading up to Father Gilbert's murder, three years to the day of his arrival in Canada. It didn't make sense to her or to anyone, that Dasna should have left a country of warfare and strife, and come to Canada, a country that was supposedly safe, and meet his death in such a violent way exactly three years to the date of his arrival in the country. “But you couldn't carry on living with the anger.&”

“What's the point of anger? Anger destroys me more than the other person,&” added Gauthier. Instead they remember happier times, happier moments of Dasna, a man they called a genuine, laughter-filled person with an irrepressible joie de vivre.

“We remember not the tragedy of Fr. Gilbert's death, but the goodness of his life,&” says Gauthier.

A candle decorated with Father Gilbert's picture burns at the table while Gauthier and Corbiere have their morning coffees, just as it burns every time they share a drink together.

Dasna's memory is everywhere in the rectory, pictures of him dressed in a sweater with his priest's collar visible at the neck, beaming at the camera.

But so too is the memory of his death. The bullet-ridden door at the back of the rectory has been replaced, but patches still remain from where the bullets hit the wall. The carpet has two different colours - grey and brown, the grey brought in to replace the blood-soaked former carpeting.

“It's always a reminder,&” said Corbiere, looking down at the mismatched floor.

***

Dasna had had a difficult upbringing, having lost first his father at the age of six, and then his mother at the age of 12, and was left to be cared for by his sister, a nun, who ensured he got an education and saw him through his ordination as a priest where he served in Nigeria. When the call came for him to move abroad and serve in the community of St. Paul, Alberta, Gauthier said he felt sure what Dasna's response would be.

“His answer would be yes - If this is where God is sending me, yes.&”

That was how he would meet Corbiere and Gauthier, who grew fond of his humour and antics, but also his generous spirit.

“He used to make up his own hymns,&” recalled Corbiere. “He would make them up as he went, doing dishes and singing.&” She noted when things weren't going his way, he used to say in a mock-tone of despair, “Oh, le pauvre Gilbert.&”

When his sister died a few months before his own death in a vehicle accident, Dasna was devastated, they recalled. He went back to Africa to be with the remaining family and to pray for his sister, but came back with the desire to celebrate his birthday in his new home in Canada.

“He went with three suitcases - he came back just with his satchel,&” they recalled, remembering his generosity to those in need, the willingness to literally give away the shirt on his back. When he returned to a frigid St. Paul that February, he had left his coat behind, and waved off any concerns over his wellbeing, saying, “I'm not cold.&”

And he had faith. Despite the hardships that had befallen him, Dasna had absolute faith in God.

“His faith was just like a rock,&” said Gauthier.

***

Just as he accepted the call to go to Canada as a missionary, Dasna happily accepted the call to serve the parishes of Saddle Lake and Goodfish Lake.

With his acceptance of all people and his openness, Dasna drew people to the church, with the congregation swelling from a few parishioners to 50.

Gauthier recalled Dasna was able to empathize with the people of Saddle Lake, since he too had been sent to a boarding school as some of them had been sent to residential schools - he could remember not having his family near, or going to bed hungry.

“He could sympathize with them - because he'd lived it,&” said Corbiere.

Saddle Lake resident Patsy Hysell was among the ones that loved Dasna and remembered him for his big heart and love of laughter.

She met Dasna four years ago, during the lead-up to Holy Week. Right away, she felt like she knew him. “It was like he's always been a part of our life,&” she said.

He connected with others who had lived through difficulties, she said, noting, “He lived through a lot of horrible things and it was easy for him to understand and say, ‘I'm still here with my faith.'&”

That faith would prove an inspiration to Hysell and over time, she, her husband and her mother would grow to include Dasna like a member of the family, and like he did of Corbiere, he dubbed Hysell ‘mom.'

“In those three years, we've been given a lifetime of memories,&” she said.

In just one moment of the hundreds that she shared with Dasna, she recalled his larger than life sense of humour - a time where they were sharing dinner together with a gathering of church members and rabbit soup was on the menu.

“We leave the entire rabbit in the soup,&” explained Hysell. She assumed her friend had removed the rabbit out of this soup and she left Dasna to finish cooking it.

“He's stirring the soup and up pops this rabbit head - its teeth are showing,&” giggles Hysell.

“He just started laughing, and he had this really loud, bellowing laugh. He said, ‘The rabbit was smiling at me!'&”

For the next couple of weeks, Dasna would tell people the story, pulling a comical face and saying, “‘This is the face the rabbit made for me!' That went on for weeks,&” said Hysell, the smile still in her voice.

“He made light of things that most people would be horrified about.&”

“I think of things like that. I think of the good things now. I remember that time - a lot of hope we have - he filled us with that.&”

Hysell noted her own son, who is 27, had distanced himself from the family and has made his own choices that separate him from her.

But while he was alive, she recalled through tears that Dasna told her, “I will always be your son. I'll always be there for you.&”

***

On May 9 of last year, Corbiere had left the rectory just after 4 p.m. Since it was the weekend of Mother's Day, Dasna had given her a Mother's Day card.

“He always called me mom, or la mere,&” Corbiere said with a smile, noting the 32-year-old young priest was more like a grandson to her. Dasna would reassure her about her husband, who was quite sick at the time, and who passed away later that month.

“He would talk to me every day about my husband,&” she said, recalling he would tell her, “La mere, everything will be OK.&”

The afternoon of May 9 would be the last time she saw him or hear his reassuring words.

At 6 p.m., alone in the rectory, Dasna would hear the call to the north door of the rectory, which the unsuspecting Dasna would open to Quadros.

Quadros would fire five times at Dasna before speeding away in a black truck, leaving the rectory door wide open and the priest alive but mortally wounded. While still alive, Dasna reached for his cell phone and called 911.

The only witness to the shooting was Gauthier's dog zeEV - a Hebrew word for wolf - who would run out sometime during the evening's events, not returning until midnight.

“If the dog could talk, we would know what happened,&” said Corbiere. But as it was, the secrets of that night will live and die with zeEV, who came back to the rectory with a more pronounced limp and a tendency - or so it seems to Gauthier - to be a little more agitated by knocks on the door and the appearance of strangers at the home.

Minutes after shooting Fr. Dasna, Quadros would proceed to the local RCMP detachment, where he would fire shots before speeding away from police and through town.

Police would set off in pursuit of Quadros, who originally was heading out of town before circling back into downtown.

The Friday night crowd of people in downtown would be caught in the midst of the next few minutes of chaos and gunfire.

***

Tammy Roeder-Renauld was driving down Main Street on the evening. From her rearview mirror, she could see a police officer behind her and moved to the passing lane to allow the vehicle to pass.

In split seconds, the driver of the police vehicle, Const. Tammy Protasiwich, saw the amount of civilians on the street that had no idea they were about to be caught in the middle of a police pursuit. She made the decision to pull her police truck into the middle of the intersection at 48 Street and 50th Avenue.

An Edmonton Journal article that included interviews with RCMP conducted by investigators after the incident explained how Protasiwich realized Quadros' truck was speeding towards her.

“You could see it in his expression,&” she was quoted as saying to an investigator doing a review of the incident. “I knew he was coming for me.&”

Roeder-Renauld watched as Quadros smashed into the police truck, pinning Protasiwich in the vehicle and crushing her legs.

“I am sure that if she had not put her life on the line that it would have been me and the gentleman in front of me that would have been hurt or killed,&” Roeder-Renauld said at the time.

As Roeder-Renauld watched, police and Quadros exchanged fire. She frantically called her husband and told him what was happening. She recalled that Quadros pointed his gun at the man in front of her and looked at her on the phone, but he never fired on her.

Moments later, another eyewitness reported hearing an officer shout, “He's down, he's down, he's killed himself.&”

A year later, Roeder-Renauld said she still thought of the incident and was overcome with thoughts of “What if …&”

“What if I had my kids with me? What if he had shot in my direction? What if bullets had deflected? What if Tammy hadn't pulled in front of me? . . . Things would have turned out differently.&”

In the aftermath of the shooting, she got to know Tammy Protasiwich, whom she met through a mutual friend and through both of them attending hockey and baseball practices.

“It's hard to watch her. She's still having trouble walking - so I'm reminded all the time,&” she said. She finally got to tell Protasiwich in person how thankful she was for her actions on that day, but Protasiwich was quick to deflect praise.

“She just said she was doing her job.&”

***

There was another person who took the attitude of just doing his job on that night.

Const. David Henry showed up at the scene of the shooting just as the gunfire ended. He went to Protasiwich, noting that as he worked as a medic years ago, and like with anyone else, “preserving life is an absolute instinct.&”

He checked that she was OK, and not realizing that the shooter was already dead, checked to make sure Quadros would not start shooting again.

Just then, Henry and another member were diverted to the address of the rectory and were told by dispatch, “We think it has to do with the same incident.&”

Henry showed up to find Dasna lying halfway through the doorway of the rectory, with wounds to the chest.

His immediate thought, Henry said, was to “start plugging the hole.&” Dasna was alive and still talking, and Henry told him help was on the way. He recalled that in the midst of the horror of the night, Dasna's face looked calm.

“He just looked at me, said ‘It's OK,'&” said Henry. Despite his attempts to save him, Henry knew it was over.

***

Meanwhile, Corbiere was going about her regular Friday night errands, unaware of what was unfolding until she received a call from a friend to avoid downtown because of the shooting. Minutes later, the friend called back to say the shooting had ended, adding, “It looks like someone went into the rectory. The door was wide open.&”

Corbiere immediately called Dasna, but there was no answer on the house phone or on Dasna's cell.

“He always answered when I called his cell. When he didn't answer, I got worried.&”

She rushed to the rectory and drove right up to the south door, where she saw police cars and a familiar face, an RCMP member who had been preparing for his confirmation at the time.

“I asked, is Father Gilbert alright?&”

“Alice, it's a very bad day,&” she said, recalling he held her. “I can't tell you why - you have to talk to Fr. Peter Tran.&”

When she heard the news that Father Gilbert had been shot, there was a moment of disbelief. Gauthier recalled the news was one that was hard to take in, because no one could understand who would want to kill a priest that was so well-loved.

“At that moment, I broke down,&” Corbiere said.

***

Hysell recalled that living in Saddle Lake, it was usual to see RCMP on the reserve, but unusual for RCMP to interact casually with her or others. A few months before the shooting, Const. David Henry had stopped by her house and said hello to her and her husband.

“He came over to introduce himself. It kind of shocked us because we've never had that in our community,&” said Hysell.

When she found out that Henry was with Dasna in his last moments, she felt one of her biggest fears was answered - that Dasna did not die alone, but with Henry by his side.

“I don't think it was a coincidence it was him that was with Father that day.&”

She notes that Henry still stops by to see her. “He has become a friend - he stops in to visit now and then. It means a lot to us.&”

While Hysell and others who loved Dasna said they took comfort in knowing Henry was with Father in his final moments, his death is still one Henry says he struggles with.

“My job is to preserve life,&” he said simply. “A service would have been keeping him alive.&”

But, he said, he moves forward with each day that passes.

“I've got a great crew with me, so that helps a lot,&” he said, adding, “It's getting easier by the day. You move on and you do what you have to do.&”

Moving on is something those who loved Dasna still deal with on a day-to-day basis.

“I used to cry looking at his picture,&” said Hysell. “At first, all I could think about was the fact that he had been murdered.&”

But while she still feels the void of his absence, she said she has found some peace with his murder. “I have forgiven . . . I've been able to let that go.&”

That was a lesson Dasna taught her, she said, “not to hold on to things, not to let it consume you, allowing God to take it from us.&”

In Holy Week, she keenly felt his absence - the first time she had met him, and the last holy time she had spent with him before his murder.

But in that time, she felt something change.

“I started to feel that peace - he's here. I feel him,&” she said. “His presence is there - I don't think that's ever going to change.&”

“Now I see it as Father is in the most beautiful place anyone can be. He is ultimately where we all want to be.&”

Just as Dasna held constant faith, those who loved him best do so as well, and Gauthier says, looking up at the picture of the smiling priest, “I know, one day, we will meet again.&”