![]() I knew that he was kind of a natural leader, that he had a knack for defusing situations that were getting weird or, I don't know, aggressive. I mean, I knew what kind of a person he was in a lot of ways. Was there anything you learned about your brother Paul while making this podcast that surprised you? No, not really. A couple of weeks later, I reached out to her and asked if she'd sit for an interview. It was a really touching and intense moment. A little later, she came up to me and said something like, "I'm not sure if you remember me, but I was a witness at your brother's trial and seeing your parents go through what they were going through, it changed my life." She told me she became a grief counselor afterwards, with a focus on childhood grief, and actually made it her life's work. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Yvonne looking at me very intently. I know son – I actually know all her kids – they're all great, but I saw her son Tom at this exhibit and we chatted a bit. One day, my wife Caity and I were at a Leonard Cohen exhibit in Montreal just as I was starting work on the podcast. And she was called as a witness at several of the court hearings and trials, but I don't think I ever spoke to her. She was waiting at the red light as he crossed in front of her and was hit by the cop car. Can you talk a bit about the role your therapist played in the making of Sorry About The Kid? How did she get involved with the project? So many things that happened in the making of the podcast were really serendipitous, like oddly so, and running into Yvonne was one of those. I don't think there's any other medium that would have afforded me this opportunity to finally process it all. And the fact that it was all so sudden and public, that he was killed in front of hundreds of people and that his death was covered so extensively in the news and then the years of legal hearings and trials… All these distractions made it easier to get by in a lot of ways, but at the same time, made it almost impossible to kind of just sit and accept all those emotions.īut making the podcast, and talking with so many people who knew him, who loved him, who could tell me about the things they remember and miss most about him, it was really cathartic. It's old enough to have a sense of what you lost but still too young to know how to really express it. I was 10 when he died and it's a really strange age to experience such a trauma. But his brother, alive? Those memories are gone.Listen to Sorry About The Kid: /UYz1974BVV- What role did making this podcast play in your own grieving process? It was huge. In 1990, 14-year-old Paul McKinnon was hit and killed by a speeding police cruiser, shocking Montreal.Alex McKinnon remembers everything about the day of the accident. I needed to remember how he was in life and not just in death. ![]() ![]() I needed to get to know Paul in a different way. So I just decided that I needed to flip the script. When we came back to Montreal, though, all those reminders of Paul and the pain his death had caused me and my family – they were all still there. While I was still thinking of Paul a lot, his memory wasn't confronting me in the same way. We spent about 8 years there, got married and had our first kid. In 2010, my girlfriend and I moved to Los Angeles. And when I'd leave the school and go to catch my bus home, I'd wait at the stop right in front of where he'd been killed. A couple of years after Paul died, I started going to the same high school as he'd gone to and for basically 5 years, I was confronted with his legacy daily – pictures of him in the hallway, teachers he'd had, friends of his, etc. Why did you decide now was the right moment to tell this story, 30 years after Paul's death? It was really something I needed to do for myself more than anything. ![]() The four-part series, out now, recounts the aftermath of the horrible accident and follows Alex's attempts to regain his memories of Paul.Īlex McKinnon spoke to CBC Podcasts about what the making of Sorry About The Kid taught him about his brother, and himself. Thirty years later, Paul's brother, Alex McKinnon, unearths his childhood grief in the new podcast Sorry About The Kid – with help from family, friends and a therapist who witnessed his brother's death. The incident shocked Montreal and changed a family and a community forever. Paul McKinnon was the fourth person to be killed by a police car in Montreal that year. In 1990, 14-year-old Paul McKinnon was crossing the street to get to his school bus when he was hit and killed by a speeding police cruiser.
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