April 19th: Close to Home

We are shocked and devastated by the shooting rampage that claimed over 19 lives yesterday -- including an RCMP officer -- in the county next to ours, in places we know so well. Sixteen crime scenes! Every time the news updates, we can't believe what we're hearing. To be Canada's worse mass shooting since the 1989 murders at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal is not how we want to be known, yet will lay claim to that title for decades to come.

I've written so often about my search for heart and home in rural Nova Scotia. To have that heart broken so close to home is unbelievable. What we're struggling with, in particular, is that, yesterday, as we got up and did chores, drank coffee and ate breakfast, went into town to do the online church service...that rampage was underway -- and had been since the night before. Many of the shootings and the deaths were happening as we did church.

During his daily press briefing this morning, our Prime Minister only talked about this horrific event and spoke on behalf of the entire nation grieving with us (I have to say, leading a nation during a tragedy is what Justin Trudeau excels at; I found his demeanor and his words comforting).
At one point, he said, "Canadians are generous and kind".
I'd like to add that no one is kinder or more generous than a rural Nova Scotian. There are such good people in our rural area, such good, down-to-earth, unflappable people, and it is tragic to know their hearts are broken. It is hard to see all Nova Scotians in such pain. But as we learn about the wonderful, hard-working, loving people whose lives were destroyed, we will see the generosity and kindness of Nova Scotians rise up in response.

Honouring the fallen:
Constable Heidi Stevenson
Lisa McCully
Heather O'Brien
Kristen Beaton and her unborn child
Gina Goulet
Sean McLeod & Alanna Jenkins - Cumberland County
Tom Bagley - Cumberland County
Aaron Tuck & Nicole Oliver
Jolene Tuck
Greg and Jamie Blair
*Lillian Hyslop - Cumberland County
Corrie Ellison
Joey Webber
*Dawn Madsen & Frank Gulenchyn
*John Zahl & Elizabeth Thomas
Joy & Peter Bond

The names with an asterix? People who moved to Nova Scotia. Who chose to move here, to retire here. Because we are friendly. We are safe.
And now I know four of those killed lived in Cumberland County - in Wentworth, a place we drive through countless times a year. I now know someone whose family member was killed...

These are the names of school teachers, nurses, corrections officers, retirees, an aspiring musician...Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, grandparents, friends, neighbours, co-workers...
People with lives and loves, work and hobbies, plans and dreams. Kind and helpful people who were fooled by a man masquerading as a police officer.

It is incomprehensible.

Time for a walk by the river. Not for solace, merely for silence.

"When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives might be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake,

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax with forethought

of grief.  I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time,

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

~ The Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry