Maher: Time to reflect on the courage of our ancestors
By Stephen Maher, Postmedia News October 23, 2014
When I heard about the shooting, and headed to Parliament Hill, the first sign that something bad had happened was across Sussex Drive from the American embassy, where two Ottawa police officers were standing guard. One of them had an automatic rifle. A third man in green fatigues and a Kevlar vest was with them, with a police dog at his feet.
This, I thought with dismay, will now be a more common sight.
A few minutes closer to the Hill, on Wellington Street, across from the National War Memorial, I run into an ashen-faced John Ivison, of the National Post, who had arrived minutes earlier. He pointed to an older model Toyota Corolla car parked on the street and told me it was believed to be the shooter’s car.
A female police officer was walking down Wellington, putting up a line of police tape, shutting down the area.
Everyone was quiet, serious, tense.
I walked past Langevin building to the corner of Wellington and Metcalfe, across the street from the Hill. This was still minutes after the shooting, and nobody knew what was going on. Police were streaming to the Hill.
A few minutes earlier, a gunman had shot Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, 24, a member of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, a reserve regiment based in Hamilton, Ont.
Bystanders gave him mouth to mouth in a vain attempt to save his life.
After that, witnesses say, the gunman got into the Corolla, drove a very short distance and parked the car on Wellington. He then appears to have somehow got into Centre Block, where he shot and injured two guards before he was shot to death by Kevin Vickers, the gentlemanly former RCMP officer in charge of security on the Hill.
For the next several hours, police streamed to the Hill, organized themselves and slowly set up an expanding security perimeter.
I watched it for hours, being politely and firmly told to move back by very professional Ottawa Police Service officers.
Their calmness and resolve was impressive, and it was impressive to listen to the calm talk of the commanders on their police radios, all of them focused on making Canadians safe.
On the street, as in the Hall of Honour, where security guards bravely rushed the shooter, the courage and resolve of our police is a source of comfort to us when we are scared.
And people were scared. Cell towers downtown were overwhelmed with people calling and texting their loved ones. There were false reports of a third shooting scene at the Rideau Centre, and a fourth, at the Chateau Laurier. Police were scanning the rooftops looking for a shooter at large. At one point, a police officer warned me to get out of the street and take cover behind a building, so that I wouldn’t be a target.
It is too early to say for sure, but it seems likely that this was the work of one disturbed individual, someone swayed by the dark propaganda of extremists on the other side of the world.
It appears to be the same thing with the death of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, 53, who was run down in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., on Monday.
This is a terrible business, and we must mourn the loss of Vincent and Cirillo.
But we had best guard against giving into our fears.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Canadian Forces sent out an email to some members warning them against wearing their uniforms off base, cautioning they shouldn’t be seen to be soldiers when they stop for gas, for instance.
I think we should think of our ancestors. The war memorial that Cpl. Cirillo gave his life protecting was erected in 1938 to commemorate our losses in the First World War.
We lost almost 60,000 people in that war and more than 40,000 in the Second World War. We lost 158 in Afghanistan, not to mention the thousands of Canadian Forces members and veterans who will never fully recover from their physical and psychological wounds they suffered over there.
Our ancestors would not have allowed themselves to be cowed by two or three or 10 incidents like this.
On Wednesday evening, DND told me they have decided to suspend the sentry program in front of the war memorial “until further notice.”
Over time, as our society has become safer, we have become increasingly risk-adverse and fearful.
The blood-soaked maniacs in Iraq who are inspiring these killings know that about us, and they want us to be afraid. They want us to pay attention to their demented rants, to worry about more attacks.
If we give in to our fears, we will be engaged in an impossible quest for perfect security, and our streets will be lined with police. We will spend half our lives going through metal detectors, give up our civil liberties, and we won’t be any safer.
Or we can meditate on the courage of our ancestors, mourn the loss of Warrant Officer Vincent and Cpl. Cirillo, get those sentries back in front of the memorial, and take every opportunity to thank Canadian Forces members for having the courage to wear their uniforms in the street.
smaher@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/@stphnmaher
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