Unthinkable

"Our belief is that people who are using violence to undermine democracy want us to be silenced and we refuse to be silenced."  - Kathleen Wynne

This morning Corporal Nathan Cirillo went to work, unarmed, to stand as an honorary guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier in Ottawa.  Corporal Cirillo was a reservist,  just 24 years old, a son, a brother, a father.  I imagine that his mother was quietly relieved that her soldier son had such safe duty rather than being posted on the other side of the world to fight a war that few of us understand.  Tonight, Corporal Cirillo's mother is without her son, his sister is without her brother, his son is without his father.  And all of Canada is without the sense of security that has always shored us up.

There is a great deal of chatter today about the gunman who killed Corporal Cirillo.  We know little of him.  What we do know is that he is another home-grown terrorist, a recent convert to Islam, the second in a week to launch an attack on Canadian soldiers.  Social media, as it is want to do, is filled with venom, with hate, with misinformation and speculation.  I suppose it is the nature of people in the absence of information, to try to fill in the gaps.  Anti-Muslim rhetoric is in full swing.  There is rampant speculation about the ethnic origins of the gunman.  It is sick and sad and more than a little frightening.  Judging from the gunman's name at birth, his ethnicity is as about as exotic as Wonder Bread.  When his face is not wrapped in a scarf, he looks like an average white guy.  He was born in Quebec.

As a nation, we face a few challenges in the next few days.  We must resist the urge to vilify a whole religious segment of the population and we must resist the urge to politicize these events.  Each of the three main party leaders made statements today about the situation.  Beyond platitudes, none of them had much to say with the exception of Mr. Trudeau who managed to rub some people the wrong way by suggesting that we need to figure out how we are contributing to the creation of home-grown terrorists.  He's right, of course, but perhaps it was too early and politically unwise to speak beyond platitudes today. 

I am beyond trying to figure it out tonight.  I've been crying all day for the loss of the innocence of a nation, for the loss of a good man and for another mother's broken heart.