First-year engineering student Cameron Bruce is being remembered through an initiative started by his FREC s and fellow frosh.
Bruce died on Sept. 13 after a fall from his Victoria Hall residence window.
Following an Oct. 5th memorial ceremony, jacket patches have been made available for purchase
for those who would like to add a memorial to Bruce to their Queen’s jacket.
Jacket patches are commonly added to Queen’s Faculty jackets to acknowledge a student’s involvement with a particular group or community, such as a residence, or to denote participation in certain events like drinking games and physical challenges. They are available at the Campus Bookstore for under $7.
President of the Engineering Society President Victoria Pleavin said the design of the patch is still being planned, and more details concerning the logistics of the patch will be available in a couple of weeks.
“The engineering society [will] facilitate the selling of the patches from our offices,” Pleavin, Sci ‘10 said, adding that the patch was designed by Bruce’s frosh group and FREC group. So far the patch has been requested by over 100 people.
“I had a lot of emails saying ‘I didn’t know him but I want to honour him and put [his name] on my jacket,” she said.
Bruce was an avid trumpet player and attended the New England Music Camp for four years before coming to Queen’s. One dollar from every Bruce memorial jacket patch will be donated to the Cameron Bruce Trumpet Scholarship at the New England Music Camp.
“A lot of people emailed and want to give to the charity,” Pleavin said, adding that the Bruce family is supportive of the initiative.
“[His family] has also expressed that they are going to order some patches,” she said.
AMS President Safiah Chowdhury said the jacket patches will be available for any student that wants them. She said although there hopefully won’t be other student deaths on campus, the memorial jacket patches could set a precedent.
“The idea of having jacket bars in memory of Cameron Bruce is a great gesture. Jackets are a fundamental part of the engineering experience at Queen’s,” Chowdhury, ArtSci ’10, said.
“[The memorial jacket bars] shows a level of community amongst the engineering community at Queen’s and [it] shows how much respect they had for Cameron Bruce after knowing him for such a short time,” she said.
— With files from Clare Clancy
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.
