Briar MacLean was sitting in class during a study period Tuesday, the
teacher was on the other side of the room and, as Grade 7 bullies are
wont to do, one kid started harassing another.
“I was in between two desks and he was poking and prodding the guy,”
Briar, 13, said at the kitchen table of his Calgary home Friday.
“He put him in a headlock, and I saw that.”
He added he didn’t see the knife, but “I heard the flick, and I heard them say there was a knife.”
I heard the flick, and I heard them say there was a knife
The rest was just instinct. Briar stepped up to defend his classmate, pushing the knife-wielding bully away.
The teacher took notice, the principal was summoned and Briar went about
his day. It wasn’t until fourth period everything went haywire.
“I got called to the office and I wasn’t able to leave until the end of the day,” he said.
That’s when Leah O’Donnell, Briar’s mother, received a call from the vice-principal.
“They phoned me and said, ‘Briar was involved in an incident today,’” she said. “That he decided to ‘play hero’ and jump in.”
Ms. O’Donnell was politely informed the school did not “condone
heroics,” she said. Instead, Briar should have found a teacher to handle
the situation.
“I asked: ‘In the time it would have taken him to go get a teacher,
could that kid’s throat have been slit?’ She said yes, but that’s beside
the point. That we ‘don’t condone heroics in this school.’ ”
Instead of getting a pat on the back for his bravery, Briar was made to
feel as if he had done something terribly wrong. The police were called,
the teen filed a statement and his locker was searched.
Calgary Police Service confirmed there was an incident at Sir John A.
Macdonald junior high school Tuesday: a third student intervened in a
fight between two others and a knife was involved.
The incident is being investigated and no one has been charged.
Ms. O’Donnell said the bully had since been suspended.
Sitting in their northwest Calgary home as Briar’s younger brother
played with Buzz Lightyear action figures, Ms. O’Donnell said this isn’t
the first time her child had been in trouble for confronting bullies,
either.
She teaches her son to stand up for others, and for himself. His heroics were featured on the front page of Friday’s Calgary Sun. His mother had obtained several copies she stacked on her coffee table.
