Tom Mountain is an Oak Hill resident whose eldest son, now age 37, survived the Oak Hill bus crash.

This week marks 25 years since the Oak Hill bus crash that killed four Newton students and injured dozens more on April 27, 2001, in New Brunswick, Canada. I’ve written extensively about this tragedy in years past. I attended and participated in the commemoration this week, as I’ve done many times before.

The sadness at this event is always apparent. Yet this time I was uncharacteristically angry. Angry at the realization that this senseless tragedy should never have happened. It was totally avoidable.

Some who were involved in the planning, or who supervised this bus trip of the Oak Hill Middle School band to Nova Scotia still continue to blame themselves for this disaster.

Some are still so distraught they can’t even talk about it to this day. Others blame themselves for what they should have done, or didn’t do at that time, revisiting that most cursed phrase in the English language … What if?

Like yours truly.

What if I had pushed to have the children transported by the overnight ferry from Maine to Nova Scotia, instead of the bus driving overland all night? The other parents and staff declined this option. But maybe, just maybe, if I had pushed further, twisted some arms, insisted on it. If I had been more involved in the planning.… Yet the fact is this tragedy was not the band leader’s fault, nor the principal’s fault, nor the parents of the students who helped plan the trip or didn’t get involved enough. No. The fault lies entirely with one individual.

The bus driver.

What we know about how this tragedy occurred is what the Canadian authorities gleaned from their brief and only questioning of the bus driver on the day of the crash.

He was speeding on a hairpin turn on an exit from one highway to another. The bus careened down an embankment, tipped over on its side. Four children were killed.

I was at the site in New Brunswick a year later. It was a dangerous turn. To be driven slowly with caution. The bus driver did neither.

After he was questioned by the Canadians and ordered to appear in court that week, the bus driver fled Canada. And went into hiding.

A school parent who was a private investigator tracked him down in the Bronx, New York, a few weeks later.

The problem is the charges levied against the driver were so flimsy he could not be extradited to Canada. Had this occurred in many states in the U.S., he would have been charged with four counts of vehicular homicide. But in Canada? Reckless driving, speeding, driving to endanger.

That’s it.

So, I conferred with then Congressman Barney Frank to push the Canadians to increase the charges in order to get the bus driver extradited to Canada. He in turn enlisted former Massachusetts Governor turned Ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci to do the same. The Canadian authorities did not cooperate. There was nothing either of them could do further.

The driver fled to China shortly afterwards. Yet the truth is he didn’t need to flee anywhere, since he couldn’t be charged in the U.S. anyway. Even though he was directly responsible for the deaths of four American children on a trip that originated in Newton, in the USA.

No one has heard from him since. And justice was never served.

Yet now here we were some 25 years later with the still grieving parents holding yet another memorial service for their children who were twelve or thirteen when they were killed in the bus crash. Children who should have been in their mid-thirties by now, married with children of their own, just like their thirty-something friends who survived the crash, who were at the ceremony.

There is no silver lining in this. No lesson to be internalized. Except that life is fragile. Life can be tragic. Life can end in catastrophe. And those families who lost their children, and the survivors of the tragedy, are left to carry on as best as they can. Year after year, decade after decade.

Tom Mountain