Seventeen-year-old Kim Rabot was the first murder victim in a tragic series of events on Oct. 27, 1975, that culminated in a fatal shooting at an Ottawa high school. For the last quarter-century, one of Rabot's friends has worked to ensure she is remembered as more than just the victim of a heinous crime. (Videography and editing by Mathieu Deroy. Set design by Michel Aspirot.)

Warning: This story discusses school violence, sexual assault and suicide.

When Trina Costantini-Powell began brainstorming what to feature in the 1970s room during her Ottawa high school's centennial, she thought of Nixon, Trudeau and the Vietnam War.

But when she and other Glebe Collegiate Institute graduates gathered amid all the trophies and yearbooks in the school's archive, they came upon something else behind a curtain: a framed pastel portrait of a hopeful-looking young woman who never made it to her own graduation.

That person, Costantini-Powell informed the group, was Kim Rabot.

That prompted some to ask: "W ell, who is Kim Rabot?"

Rabot's family says she wanted to study to become a doctor. (Mathieu Deroy/CBC)

Fifty years ago this month, Rabot, only 17, was the first victim in a shocking and scarring series of events CBC is revisiting in an ongoing four-part series.

On Oct. 27, 1975, a student at St. Pius X High School raped and murdered Rabot at his home and went on to shoot up his St. Pius religion class, fatally wounding an 18-year-old classmate named Mark Hough and killing himself with the gun.

The murders and suicide sent shockwaves through the two schools and across the country. Canada's firearms acquisition certificate system was introduced two years later.

But while the stories of some of the shooting survivors emerged over time, the same cannot be sa