L’ecole Polytechnique, Columbine, Concordia, Dawson College, a high school in Taber, an Amish schoolhouse and now Virginia Tech, schools separated by vast swaths of Geography, but forever linked together by horror and a sense of the inexplicable.
The News cycle went full steam ahead Monday, the first reports but a sidebar story of a possible murder in a college dorm, disturbing but a reminder of the human ability to do harm. Less than two hours later, the report of that shooting at the dorm would explode into the world’s consciousness, as it morphed into the worst mass murder at university or college in the United States history. For a nation numbed by gun violence it would still resonate far beyond the gates of Virginia Tech and indeed beyond the borders of the United States.
There seem to be no answers, as there never is when a senseless tragedy such as this takes place. Normally a place for learning, sharing and dreams of the future, instead it becomes a spot where lives are cut short far too soon, hopes and dreams snuffed out forever, seemingly in the space of mere seconds.
The television coverage is haunting, the cel phone video provided to CNN and the other news networks is stark and disturbing, a shaky visual image which features the muffled sound of gunfire. Each one sounding like tinny pops, and suddenly, with the benefit of hindsight it registers with you, each pop possibly is another young life that has ended. Somewhere inside that building on that shaky video display lays a son or daughter, father or mother, husband or wife, who has been killed in a cold blooded rage that we can surely never comprehend.
Watching the coverage makes you feel helpless and sick, there can be no answer for such a horrible thing, nothing it seems makes any sense. As we have in the past, we shake our heads, say a prayer for those that have been killed and wonder where this world is going and how such a thing can happen again.
There are many questions that come to mind after viewing the events of Monday, the strange timeline between the two horrible events, the confusing response of the officials on the campus, the surreal press conferences that left us with more questions than provided answers and of course the sense of wonderment at the handling of the incident by the different media outlets.
They are all points which will no doubt receive a fair amount of attention over the next days, weeks and months. But for now, it should only be about the victims of a horrible day in a place that is supposed to be a safe refuge for the youth of a nation.
Canadians can be rather smug at times when it comes to violence in the States compared to this country, but in this tragedy there is no such feeling prevalent, for we have been in their shoes and we know the hurt, the mystery and the fears. The tragedies at Canadian high schools, colleges and Universities over the years have shown that insanity knows no borders, provides for no comfort and gives us pause to think of those in Virginia today.
The Universities and colleges of the world are normally the place for dreams and ambitions, the building of a sense of a great future just beyond those gates.
Instead today, they became a place of history and horror, a terrible new entry into a book that already has far too many entries.
Their sadness at Virginia Tech is our sadness today. May the victims rest in peace and find a better life than what our world provided for them on Monday morning.
The News cycle went full steam ahead Monday, the first reports but a sidebar story of a possible murder in a college dorm, disturbing but a reminder of the human ability to do harm. Less than two hours later, the report of that shooting at the dorm would explode into the world’s consciousness, as it morphed into the worst mass murder at university or college in the United States history. For a nation numbed by gun violence it would still resonate far beyond the gates of Virginia Tech and indeed beyond the borders of the United States.
There seem to be no answers, as there never is when a senseless tragedy such as this takes place. Normally a place for learning, sharing and dreams of the future, instead it becomes a spot where lives are cut short far too soon, hopes and dreams snuffed out forever, seemingly in the space of mere seconds.
The television coverage is haunting, the cel phone video provided to CNN and the other news networks is stark and disturbing, a shaky visual image which features the muffled sound of gunfire. Each one sounding like tinny pops, and suddenly, with the benefit of hindsight it registers with you, each pop possibly is another young life that has ended. Somewhere inside that building on that shaky video display lays a son or daughter, father or mother, husband or wife, who has been killed in a cold blooded rage that we can surely never comprehend.
Watching the coverage makes you feel helpless and sick, there can be no answer for such a horrible thing, nothing it seems makes any sense. As we have in the past, we shake our heads, say a prayer for those that have been killed and wonder where this world is going and how such a thing can happen again.
There are many questions that come to mind after viewing the events of Monday, the strange timeline between the two horrible events, the confusing response of the officials on the campus, the surreal press conferences that left us with more questions than provided answers and of course the sense of wonderment at the handling of the incident by the different media outlets.
They are all points which will no doubt receive a fair amount of attention over the next days, weeks and months. But for now, it should only be about the victims of a horrible day in a place that is supposed to be a safe refuge for the youth of a nation.
Canadians can be rather smug at times when it comes to violence in the States compared to this country, but in this tragedy there is no such feeling prevalent, for we have been in their shoes and we know the hurt, the mystery and the fears. The tragedies at Canadian high schools, colleges and Universities over the years have shown that insanity knows no borders, provides for no comfort and gives us pause to think of those in Virginia today.
The Universities and colleges of the world are normally the place for dreams and ambitions, the building of a sense of a great future just beyond those gates.
Instead today, they became a place of history and horror, a terrible new entry into a book that already has far too many entries.
Their sadness at Virginia Tech is our sadness today. May the victims rest in peace and find a better life than what our world provided for them on Monday morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment