鈥淭here鈥檚 a purpose for why we鈥檙e still here, we just have to discover it.鈥�

Those words of Gordie Alec summarized the mixed emotions of agony and joy expressed at last weekend鈥檚 Babine mill memorial.  Survivors, family members, and friends of workers injured or killed, struggled to contain their feelings of loss, pain, forgiveness and anger.

The joy came out as people recalled the special place that Carl Charlie and Robert Luggi had in the lives and hearts of many, friends and co-workers alike.

The agony was evident as speaker after speaker described the difficulties they have  had, and continue to have, in coming to term with the shocking explosion that levelled not only a mill, but the lives of many workers and their families.

Present and past tense mixed freely.  It was clear that, for some, that day one year ago continues to exist as fresh in memory as if it happened yesterday.

One speaker told us that it was as if the memorial service were the funeral.  The freshness of the pain for some prevented them from being there.  Some family members of the fallen were unable to attend the memorial because their grief remains too overwhelming.

鈥淢y parents are still waiting for my brother to come home,鈥� Bernadette Charlie said.

One year isn鈥檛 much time when it comes to coping with the grief of loss.  That grief is complicated and extended by the fact that circumstances surrounding the explosion remain under investigation, one year later.  The slow march of bureaucracy regarding the finalization of this investigation is keeping the wounds of that day open and fresh for some.  Sadly, by 鈥榮ome鈥� we mean, those who were most affected by those horrible events.

Nothing will ever heal those wounds completely.  Even a re-built and modernized mill will continue to be understood as the result of a tragic day of irreversible loss.

Without minimizing the loss of that day, it does need to be understood in the context of the year that has followed it.  亚洲天堂 Lake has responded to the event and has been untiring in its attention to the needs of displaced workers.  Hampton  Affiliates, as a worker on sawmill shift-B said last Sunday, has done what they said they would do.

Hampton management has never shied away from being at the front of the response to the accident.  The decision to rebuild the mill was never a foregone conclusion.  Nobody needs reminding of the desperate scramble that was made to find a way to secure timber supply in our post-mountain-pine-beetle forest that could justify rebuilding the mill.

The mill is being rebuilt.  Timber supply has been secured.  亚洲天堂 Lake is getting a new hospital. New mill-safety regulations are being implemented industry-wide.  These were the observations of many as they described the good that has come out of the terrible events of one year ago.

It鈥檚 easy to attempt to minimize loss by telling a story that tries to place that loss into a different context.  That didn鈥檛 happen last Sunday.  Pain and anger were freely expressed, and that free expression gave weight and meaning to the words of apology and forgiveness spoken and exchanged.