We are asking our supporters to help us STOP Dream Street Pictures from making a movie about the Bathurst High School Phantoms basketball team in Bathurst in November by joining our Letter Writing Campaign and join our FACEBOOK site.
1. Print out the Form Letter by a) clicking on the image to the right and b) right click to download to your desktop. Or you can click here to download the Microsoft Word document.
2. If you have a scanner, please scan the letter and send it by email to david.alward@gnb.ca with a copy to the following email addresses: info@vanangels.ca, trevor.holder@gnb.ca, claude.williams@gnb.ca, jody.carr@gnb.ca, brian.kenny@gnb.ca, Ryan.Riordon@gnb.ca, John.McLaughlin@gnb.ca, city@bathurst.ca
3. If you do not have a scanner, please fill out the letter and send it to us by mail and we will send it to the Premier ourselves. Our mailing address is:
Van Angels
204 Lakeside Ave.
Bathurst, NB
E2A 2S7
We are often asked why we are against this film. Here are three good reasons why we do not want this film to be made.
1. It is too soon to make a film about the Bathurst tragedy. Only three and a half years have passed since our boys were killed. We are still in mourning and ask that the film company and John McLaughlin, District 15 Superintendent, respect our wishes and reverse the decision to allow Dream Street Pictures to film at Bathurst High School in November. The producers of We Are Marshall, a film with a similar theme, had the decency to wait 30 years to make a film about a community in mourning over the loss of its football team.
2. We parents were never informed that this film was going to be made: we were never contacted by the producers, the District Superintendent of District 15, John McLaughlin or the Minister of Education. Meantime, the producers of this film and the District Superintendent and the Department of Education knew long in advance that this film was going to be made because the producers had to apply for funding from the NB Film over a year ago and the Department of Education for permission to film on location at Bathurst High School.
3. The May 2009 Coroners Inquest into the Boys in Red Tragedy called for professional, class 2 Drivers behind the wheel of the new Multi Fuction Activity Buses that replaced the now banned 15 passsenger vans in New Brunswick. Instead of doing that, the provincial government created a volunteer driver education program which consists of parents, teachers, coaches and other good hearted people who take a seven hour driver education course, which consists of four behind a computer and three in the classroom, a spin around the parking lot and voila, they're a volunteer driver who are allowed to drive these huge, lumberbing MFAB's filled with up tohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif 24 students to extra curricular activities. After everything that has happened with the Boys in Red, the Department has not learned a thing. This is not good enough for our children. Yet every time we ask the Department of Education to implement this recommendation for professional drivers, the province claims poverty, saying it cannot afford to have professional drivers behind the wheels of MFABs. They also say it will be the end of school sports if they have to pay for professional drivers, which we know is untrue because they seem to have no problem finding one quarter million dollars in tax payers money to fund the production of a film that whitewashes the real story behind the Boys in Red tragedy and makes the government look good. The hypocrisy of these people is breathtaking.
This is why we are against this film. Please help us to stop it from happening.
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