From far away, it looks like another bench, one of many scattered across the St. Thomas University campus.
But this bench, on the left hand side of the Brian Mulroney Hall main entrance, is different.
The first thing you notice is the beautiful woodwork, all completed without nails. It was built as a place of reflection, a place to get away from the daily pace. And if you look closely, the bench has a small circular plaque.
It reads: “John McKendy. Teacher. Scholar. Friend.”
It’s a small and subtle reminder of John’s impact on the STU campus, but it’s not the only reminder.
On Oct. 31, 2008, John was killed at his home in Douglas at the age of 59.
His death shook the STU campus and left many wondering how such a peaceful man could meet such a terrible end.
Three years later, his colleagues, students and friends have found a way to look past his violent end and focus on his life.
Looking for understanding
Chris grew up in a violent home, abused early in life by his adoptive mother. Stitches and broken bones were the norm.
He remembers being locked away in closets as a kid, but he doesn’t blame the outcome of his life on what happened to him as a child.
When he met John, Chris was seven years into a 19-year sentence for raping one woman at gunpoint and stabbing another.
Their worlds couldn’t have been more different.
John grew up in Bathurst with what friend and STU professor Stephen Pidwysocky says was a supportive family. He always spoke of his father, Arthur, and mother, Bernadette.
“He saw himself as somehow in a way privileged and he wanted to understand people who had not had that kind of familial support as he had,” Pidwysocky said.
John’s thirst to understand others started at St. Francis Xavier University in the late 1960s.
He started teaching sociology at STU in 1979 and from then on, he encouraged his students to apply what they learned in the classroom to their communities.
Although he came from a Catholic background, John embraced Quakerism, a peaceful religious group where people live simply without the focus of acquiring material wealth.
John’s involvement in the Quaker community led him to run Alternatives to Violence workshops at Dorchester Penitentiary, a medium-security prison, beginning in the early 1990s.
The workshops involved John going into the prison and counselling men involved in domestic violence.
“He saw people in prison essentially as political prisoners, people caught up in the inequality of society,” said Sylvia Hale, a STU sociology professor who was friends with John.
“The deal was that John wouldn’t go in as an outside observer, but he would come as a member of the group.”
Hale remembers John talking about the shock of realizing the men aren’t monsters just because they’ve done awful things.
“You’re sitting with them and they’re ordinary guys,” she said.
John went to Dorchester about twice a year and sometimes took his mother Bernadette along with him, even when she was in her late 70s.
Toward the end of his life, he dedicated his time to compiling narratives of the life stories of some of the men he met from Dorchester.
One of these men was Chris, whose life is documented in John’s last publication: “I’m very careful about that”: narrative and agency of men in prison.
“(He) tried to communicate what kind of people these are, how they came to do what they did in their world. To understand that, you’ve got to see how that whole structure of power and inequality works,” Hale said.
“That’s basically what his life’s work was.”
The summer before he died, John traveled to Burundi through the African Great Lakes Initiative, a Quaker group.
It was his second summer in the poor nation, where he was helping build an AIDS clinic and doing healing work with people after the civil war.
John’s job was to try and get people to work together, some who were on opposite sides of the civil war and some who may have had family members murdered during the conflict.
“I remember him telling me it was a huge culture shock leaving Canada, where…many of us have a lot of stuff,” Pidwysocky said.
“Ending up in Burundi, which is one of the poorest countries on the face of the earth, [he tried] to come to terms with that.
“When he came back to New Brunswick, he had to process everything again.”
Encouragement and support
Mary-Dan Johnston enjoyed her first year at STU, but she found herself wanting something more.
After being in John’s first-year Justice and Globalization Aquinas class, Johnston felt the need to go beyond the classroom to apply what John taught her.
For John’s portion of the Aquinas class, which is typically taught by three professors from three different disciplines, he created prompts to guide discussion.
“John’s prompts were so detailed and they would quote my classmates, what they had said last time. It was amazing.
“He was writing the textbook for the class as we were going through it.”
By the end of the year, at John’s encouragement, Johnston decided to spend her second year of university at a L’Arche community in Cape Breton, working with people with developmental disabilities.
At the same time, she communicated back and forth with John, who was advising her on an interdisciplinary honours in changing models of community.
“My year at L’Arche and my subsequent relationship with the community really had a huge impact on my life. I really wouldn’t have gone if it weren’t for his support.”
A love of the outdoors
Outside of the classroom, John spent much of his time running and hiking.
He used to run with the Fredericton Roadrunners, but stopped and felt like he was out of shape.
That’s when he asked Pidwysocky, who had never ran in his life, to be his running buddy.
After a while, the two would run from the Lady Beaverbrook Gym to the Northside. It wasn’t uncommon for them to run for more than an hour, even in the winter.
Running was a stress reliever for John, but it was also a chance for him to talk to Pidwysocky about the things that mattered to him most.
“We would just talk about life and how to be better people and things like that.”
His last days
Oct. 31, 2008, was one of those deceiving late autumn days.
The sun shined brightly, but the wind sent a chill throughout your body the second you stepped outside.
Earlier that month, Johnston stopped receiving emails from John.
“Unfortunately, when things started to get pretty complicated with his family, I stopped hearing from him.”
During that time, John had been filled with anxiety and worry, Hale said.
A dedicated father to his two daughters, Laura and Colleen, John was thrilled when Laura got married.
But only months into the marriage, it was clear things weren’t working out.
“His daughter moved back home with her dad. I’m pretty sure he felt as long as she’s with me, she’s safe,” Hale said.
But during that time, Nicholas Wade Baker, Laura’s husband, got more and more extreme with his threats.
Police were alerted, but according to Hale, the threats weren’t taken seriously.
“They said until he actually does anything [they can’t arrest him]…of course, he ended up finding her.”
Later, police would conduct an inquiry on why the threats weren’t examined closer – an inquiry that still hasn’t convinced Hale that police take domestic violence seriously.
Two days before Halloween, Pidwysocky met John in a classroom in George Martin Hall. He could tell something was wrong with John.
“I remember coming in to teach this course and he very briefly telling me that things were not okay, that there was this domestic issue going on, that he really didn’t know quite what to do.
“Almost sort of in effect that he needed time to think about it and to process what was going on.”
That night, Pidwysocky emailed John and told him to contact him if he needed anything.
That chilly Halloween day, Baker found John and his daughter and killed John.
“I’m sure John thought he could protect her. As long as he was with her, he thought nothing could happen and he was wrong,” Hale said.
On Halloween, Pidwysocky was standing outside Brian Mulroney Hall after lunch when he heard the news.
Instead of handing out candy, he spent the night with other Quakers inside a house, with a bowl of candy on the step for trick-or-treaters to help themselves.
A day later, Baker was found dead in Moncton of an apparent suicide.
“One of the regrets I have is that I probably should have called him,” Pidwysocky said.
“But…in hindsight looking back on this three years now, I really had no experience with whatever happened and I just was not prepared myself to understand really what to do.”
Keeping John alive
In Johnston’s mind, the subtle ode to John on the Brian Mulroney Hall bench is the most fitting memorial.
Three years later, she credits John for helping her become the person she is today.
“He led me towards a path that really changed my life. There’s no way that I’d be studying what I’m studying today or would have done the things that I’ve done since his death if it weren’t for his influence and his encouragement.”
Sitting on John’s bench, you can see a small pole further ahead in the upper courtyard.
Last month, the pole was erected in honour of World Peace Day, with a ceremony that paid tribute to John.
Since his death, a group of John’s colleagues and friends have created a peace studies program at STU.
This year is the first year for the introductory peace studies course, which is taught by Pidwysocky.
“I always try to remind them that while I am the instructor, I’m in many ways led by John. I’m a strong believer in the idea that one can be led by people who are no longer alive,” he said.
“I have a lot of positive experiences where John McKendy is concerned. He had a pretty profound impact on my life. Because of that, even though he’s no longer here, that just doesn’t disappear and go away.”
Someday, Pidwysocky would like to see a “John McKendy Peace Centre” to keep John’s research and spirit alive long past the third anniversary of his death.
If that happens, on that day, Pidwysocky will think back to John, as he does every time something is dedicated in his honour.
“Each time there’s something new that happens that’s somehow connected with John or named after John, I think to myself, oh my God, he’d be flabbergasted that so many people were paying attention to his work and his life and what he did.
“I think he’d be happy, but he’d also be like, ‘Woah, how did this happen?’”
