One year after Brentwood stabbings, University of Calgary looks for strength.

Miranda Cosman was in a lab at the University of Calgary when a friend called with news she still has trouble comprehending. Five students had been stabbed to death overnight at an off-campus house party – most of them old friends from high-school days.

“How could this be happening?” Ms. Cosman, 22, recalls thinking at the time. “Why is this happening? Why those people? There were a lot of whys and, of course, a lot of questions that can’t be answered. There was just a feeling of incredible loss and shock.”

On Wednesday, many students at the university will don Bermuda shorts in a 50-years-plus tradition marking the final day of classes. But the usual sense of celebration will be muted as students are reminded of the unimaginable events of a year ago in what remains the worst mass murder in the city’s history.

Far from attempting to forget that infamous day, the university is trying to become stronger and better for it. The school is holding an on-campus festival called UCalgaryStrong to mark the anniversary of the slayings. It will stress student achievement and highlight mental-health and personal well-being initiatives the university is championing thanks to a large donation by a local family, who have chosen to remain anonymous. If there is a theme to the day it is resilience, something the university has demonstrated to an inspiring degree over the past year.

The murders were allegedly carried out by Matthew de Grood, a graduate of the university who had been accepted into its law program. Although he has been receiving treatment at a psychiatric institution since his arrest, he was recently found fit to stand trial. Mr. de Grood is said to have arrived at the house party in the Calgary neighbourhood of Brentwood in the early morning hours of April 15, randomly attacking five of the more than 30 people in attendance with a kitchen knife. Dead were: Lawrence Hong, Josh Hunter, Kaitlin Perras, Zachariah Rathwell and Jordan Segura. Three of the five attended the University of Calgary.

Ms. Cosman knew all but Mr. Hong from high school. The anniversary of the murders will reawaken raw and painful memories.

“I think many of us will always be disbelieving of what happened,” said Ms. Cosman, a biological anthropology student who will attend graduate school at the University of Michigan in the fall. “It’s an absolute tragedy to have that many people, all in the same age group, all in a small community like this, killed. There are some people still dealing with the fallout from this on a daily basis because these were their best friends who were killed.”

Jarett Henry, a 22-year-old economics student at the university, said the whole campus was affected. “Everyone either knew one of the victims or knew someone who knew one of the victims,” said Mr. Henry, president of the university’s students’ union. “With how close the campus community is, it did affect everyone and it’s still fresh on the minds of students to this day.”

Both students agree the university has done a remarkable job of responding to the emotional needs of those affected by the murders. And they say that while it’s impossible to imagine anything good coming out of such a horrific event, the “Brentwood Five” are at least partially responsible for new mental-health initiatives the school is undertaking to help those struggling with the everyday stresses of university life.

University president Elizabeth Cannon says there is no doubt the murders changed the school, but in many ways for the better. “We’re a big, complex campus of 32,000 students and 6,000 faculty, so there’s a lot going on and there is never one thing that binds you all together,” she said. “But it was such a horrific event and such a tragic situation that it really has become part of the DNA of the university.”

Not long after the murders, the university got a call from a family long associated with the school wanting to make a difference in the wake of the tragedy. With the help of a $5-million donation from the family, the university came up with UCalgaryStrong, a multifaceted program intended to build a more resilient and caring campus.

It includes expanded opportunities for students who might be feeling isolated to join communities of their peers outside of the academic sphere. The school wants to help students feeling insecure to identify attributes they can build on and feel good about. The school is also introducing a bystander-intervention program that will train students to identify people in need and lead them to a place on campus to get help.

“Graduation is a defining moment in a person’s life, but that piece of paper is only one part of what I think our responsibility as a university is,” Ms. Cannon said. “Who is that person? What do they care about? What are their challenges? What are their needs and how can we help them? UCalgaryStrong is about creating the kind of campus culture that helps students have the best experience here that they can have.”

The university plans to hold a UCalgaryStrong festival every year to mark the last day of classes. In turn, it will forever be a reminder of what happened to five young students who had the rest of their lives stretched out in front of them.

“Wednesday is going to be a tough day,” Ms. Cosman said. “Everyone is going to handle it a little bit differently, grieve in their own way. Personally, I’m going to try and remember all the positives about those people and the fun times we had together.”