Peter and Amanda Clark had a plan.
They were going to buy a travel trailer, put a big map of Canada on the side and circle all the places they would visit.
The plan would take 10 years to put into action. By then, their five rescue cats would be down to two. It’s hard to travel with five cats, Amanda reasoned. All those litter boxes. But they could manage with two.
Amanda had left her career as a teacher two years ago and was studying to become psychotherapist. She would graduate in June 2027, and work at her second career for another decade. They would buy a house in the country.
But the universe had other plans. On March 23, Peter was struck in a hit-and run while working his morning shift as a crossing guard at the corner of Cedarview Road and Kennevale Drive in Barrhaven, only a few hundred metres from Mary Honeywell Elementary School. He sustained serious injuries and died in hospital. Amanda held his hand.
A community vigil will be held for Peter on May 3 at 2 p.m. in Weybridge Park behind Mary Honeywell (May 9 is the rain date).
“We’re going to have a box with little note cards where people can write notes to Peter,” says Amanda. “Because I have been collecting every condolence, every story.”
At the vigil, Amanda plans to read the text Peter sent her after the last day of school last June.
“I actually shed a couple of tears at shift today,” Peter wrote to Amanda. “Good thing I left my sunglasses on. Didn’t expect parents or kids to thank or acknowledge me. Felt wrong, like I didn’t deserve it.”
This was typical of Peter, says Amanda. He was shy and modest to a fault.
“There was so much more to him. So many layers.”
Amanda and Peter both grew up in Ottawa, Amanda in Barrhaven and Peter in Westboro. Peter’s parents were both teachers. Peter had a sprawling extended family that loved to get together at a cabin near Renfrew and a cottage in Quebec.
Peter and Amanda bumped into each other Spodie Odies, a dance bar in the ByWard Market, in 1995. Amanda was a theatre student at the University of Toronto. She didn’t mind asking a man to dance.
“I looked around, and in the far end of the room there was this absolutely handsome man. He was looking at me, and I thought, ‘There’s no way he’s looking at me.’ And he came over. And in his shy Peter voice he said, ‘Are you asking me to dance?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, if you want.’”
At the end of the night, Peter asked if Amanda would like to go to movie and asked her if she minded going on a Tuesday, when admission was cheap. Amanda scrawled her name and phone number on piece of paper with a borrowed lipstick. They went on their first date the following Tuesday to a discount movie and Harvey’s for dinner. Peter had a coupon.
He had apparently misread Amanda’s scrawled name.
“The whole night he was calling me ‘Demanda.’ I was getting a little bit offended because my family jokingly calls me that. At one point, he said: ‘You have a very unusual name. And I said, ‘Amanda is not that unusual. In fact, I’ve met a bunch of Amandas.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, I meant beautiful name.’”
Peter was living in Guelph at the time and they commuted back and forth. Amanda went to teachers’ college in Kingston. Peter tried to find work there, but wasn’t successful, so he went back to Guelph. Amanda figured she could be a teacher anywhere, so she followed him after she graduated. They married in 2001.
It seemed like an odd pairing. Amanda with a flair for theatre and Peter was terrified of anything even close to public speaking. But they both loved animals and enjoyed nothing more than getting close to a beaver or some otters from their canoe at the cottage.
“He used to call me Snow White because he thought animals were attracted to me. And I used to say to him, ‘If that was the case, I would see more when I’m by myself. They come out when we’re together, because I think they can feel our peace and our calmness,’” says Amanda.
“His dad and mom were the epitome of what we thought relationships should be there. Very gentle with each other.”
Peter was not academically inclined. He tried some college courses, taking hotel management for a semester, some computer courses. Mostly, he was doing factory work. He was diagnosed with ADHD and social anxiety disorder as an adult, and later struggled with alcohol. He went through treatment and had been sober for 13 years when he died, says Amanda.
Peter found his calling as a crossing guard .
“He really started to think about what he actually could do as a job that would suit him. He would go into a job and then try to fit himself to fit the job, rather than choosing a job that fit who he was,” says Amanda.
There was a posting for a crossing guard in Mount Forest, where the couple was living at the time.
“I said, ‘You love being outside. You’re a shy person, but you do love people. And so this would be a job where you could interact with people, but it’s not for an extended period of time. You get to be outside all the time,’” says Amanda.
“He applied for and got that job, and absolutely loved it. It fit him so well.”
The couple moved to Barrhaven two years ago to live with Amanda’s father after she quit teaching and embarked on the master’s degree. Peter went back to work as a crossing guard. Amanda was on track to graduate in the spring of 2027, and the couple planned to find a country home near Renfrew, where Peter’s father lived. They missed their home in the country, but found new places to enjoy nature at Mud Lake and Shirleys Bay.
This week Xzander Wright, 19, pleaded guilty to failing to remain at the scene. He has pleaded not guilty to dangerous driving causing death. Wright’s defence lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon said any sentencing for the guilty plea would take place after the trial for the second charge.
A date for that trial has not yet been set. Amanda has started writing her victim impact statement. She knows it may be two or three years before she can read it in court.
“I started writing it because if it takes three years, I want it to be raw,” she says.
Amanda has not spoken publicly about Peter until now.
“I have been struggling with how to be strong without him,” she says. “I’m trying to do things that are really scary to prepare myself for the victim impact statement. Because that’s the only thing I have power over.”
