It was just before 8:30 a.m. Wednesday when André Beaudoin pulled into the parking lot to bring his two-year-old son to daycare. The Garderie Éducative Ste-Rose in Laval, Que., was busy, with parents stopping to drop off their children for the day.
The sound of an engine revving was Beaudoin’s first signal that something wasn’t right. He looked up and saw a city bus barrelling down the driveway before it smashed into the front of the daycare, into the room where the oldest children—the four- and five-year-olds—gather.
What happened in the minutes and hours that followed would resonate across the country, culminating in a tragedy that left two four-year-old children dead, six children in hospital and a city bus driver with an unremarkable history facing charges of first-degree murder….