When, (three days later), the authorities finally had a number, my province was already reeling. Twenty-two… Twenty-two innocent people had died at the hands of a mad man who had gone on a killing spree. A killing spree. Here. In my province. In Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia where we are known for our friendliness, our hospitality, our community spirit.
This…person….this man had traveled approximately 100 kms in less than 24 hours, burning homes to the ground, shooting people because they were “foolish” enough to approach a “safe” vehicle.
This,,,creature had managed to buy a retired police car (totally legally), repaint it to look just like an active police car (totally illegal), obtained an R.C.M.P. uniform, and fool everyone.
All of this happened in my Nova Scotia. A province already unsteady, and trying their best to deal with, of all things, a global pandemic is now the scene of the largest killing spree in Canadian history. How can this be? How utterly unthinkable is this? But it is. It happened. Truly. One man. One deranged, twisted, human being, wreaked carnage on my little province and now we have to deal with it.
A global pandemic? Impossible. Not in this day and age with what modern medicine has to offer. Yet here we are, doing our best and trying to deal with just that. Compound that by trying to deal with twenty-two (twenty-two!) innocent people dead at the hands of someone few people had even heard of a week ago.
How do we mourn this? How do we reach out to the children who now have no mother? No father? How do we as a province help the families who have to bury their dead amidst the restrictions of social distancing and “stay at home” orders because we are already dealing with the same pandemic as the rest of the world? How does one explain to a child that Mommy or Daddy isn’t coming home because…because…why? Why exactly?
Because evil exists in this world. How do you explain that to a child? How do you mourn when you can’t hug your neighbour in comfort? How do you show your sympathies when you can’t visit the bereaved? As a province, we don’t know. This is not who we are. This is not how we do things. We hug. We visit. We are there when tragedy strikes our communities. We do not know how to deal with this.
We are bewildered.
We are torn apart with grief.
We are still too shocked to fully comprehend what has happened.
We are reeling.
We are broken.
But at the end of the day, we are Nova Scotia and somehow, we will get through this. It will take time. It will take tears. It will take a tremendous amount of effort. But we are Nova Scotia and, united in our grief, we will come through this. We are, Nova Scotia strong.
(This is probably the saddest thing I have ever written)
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