Amanda Clark says she is struggling to be strong after the loss of her husband Peter Clark, a crossing guard who was killed in a hit-and-run in Barrhaven on March 23. A community memorial will be held on Sunday, May 3, at Weybridge Park behind Mary Honeywell Elementary School.
Peter and Amanda Clark had a plan. They dreamed of buying a travel trailer, affixing a large map of Canada to its side, and marking all the places they would visit together. The plan was set to unfold over a decade. By then, their five rescue cats would be down to two, as Amanda reasoned that traveling with five cats would be challenging with all those litter boxes, but two would be manageable.
Amanda had left her teaching career two years ago and was studying to become a psychotherapist. She was set to graduate in June 2027 and work in her second career for another ten years. They also planned to buy a house in the countryside. However, fate intervened on March 23, when Peter was struck by a vehicle while working his morning shift as a crossing guard at the intersection of Cedarview Road and Kennevale Drive in Barrhaven, just a few hundred meters from Mary Honeywell Elementary School. He sustained severe injuries and later died in the hospital, with Amanda holding his hand.
The couple married near Guelph on July 28, 2001. A community vigil is scheduled for May 3 at 2 p.m. in Weybridge Park, with May 9 as the rain date. At the vigil, Amanda plans to read a text Peter sent her after the last day of school last June. In the message, Peter wrote, 'I actually shed a couple of tears at shift today. 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.' Amanda describes this as typical of Peter, who was shy and modest to a fault. 'There was so much more to him. So many layers,' she said.
Amanda and Peter both grew up in Ottawa, Amanda in Barrhaven and Peter in Westboro. Peter’s parents were both teachers, and he had a large extended family that enjoyed gathering at a cabin near Renfrew and a cottage in Quebec. The couple first met in 1995 at Spodie Odies, a dance bar in the ByWard Market. Amanda, then a theatre student at the University of Toronto, noticed Peter across the room. She recalled, '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 Amanda to a movie and inquired if she minded going on a Tuesday when admission was cheaper. She wrote her name and phone number on a piece of paper with borrowed lipstick. Their first date was a discount movie followed by dinner at Harvey’s, where Peter used a coupon.
Peter had misread Amanda’s scrawled name and called her 'Demanda' throughout the evening. Amanda initially took offense, as her family jokingly called her that. She eventually corrected him, saying, 'Amanda is not that unusual. In fact, I’ve met a bunch of Amandas.' Peter replied, 'Oh, I meant beautiful name.'
