'Quaint Canada'

As I've noted before (perhaps even droned on about), I listen to BBC radio most of the time. Radio 4, Radio 4 Extra, Radio 3. Every day I give mute thanks for our LogiTech internet radios, one upstairs, one down. On weekends I sometimes switch to NPR, especially for Car Talk and A Prairie Home Companion.

But I wake up to CBC One, the Metro Morning show hosted by Matt Galloway, and when my eyes open and my vision focuses, I check Twitter for local Toronto information. Is the subway running normally or should I warn my high-school kids to expect delays? Will there be a blizzard? Has the world ended? Today I learned that Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani Nobel Prize-winning girls' education rights activist, would appear at the high school around the corner from us as part of a program called 'Strong Girls'. Afterward, Malala would receive honorary Canadian citizenship from the prime minister at a swanky hotel downtown. My 11-year-old daughter is reading about Malala in her grade 6 class and I emailed the teacher to share my excitement about this very local event.

I also listen to CBC radio in the car, although in the usual course of things, we don't often use our car. Today was an exception; I drove elder son to a cross-country meet across town to save him an awkward trip on public transit. It is one of my non-work days so we brought the dog and arrived early; the weather was crisp but bright, the trees full of colour, and there was enough time for me to have a bit of a jog around the lake while son supervised dog. On my breathless return, they both greeted me, dog with yips and muddy paws, and son with the news that there had been a shooting outside the Parliament building in Ottawa. 'What?' I asked. 'When?'

He consulted his phone. Twenty-four minutes earlier, apparently. Like everyone else here, we're in disbelief. In the car on the way home I listened to CBC. I've had it on all day long (bar 15 minutes for The Archers). The announcers were flibbertigibbet, almost incoherent at times, during the first couple of hours. The US was offering sympathy and assistance. 'This isn't what we're used to,' said one broadcaster to another. 'We're used to it happening in their country. We're the ones who offer sympathy to them.'

It is indeed a tragedy. A young reservist enjoying the honour of guarding the Cenotaph on Parliament Hill has died of the gunshot wound inflicted by the perpetrator. He seems to have been the single father of a young son. It could have been even worse, apparently, in terms of numbers of victims, but for the quick action of the Sergeant-at-Arms inside the Parliament building, because he shot dead the (a?) gunman who marched in with a large firearm.

We do need sympathy. And more information.

On Twitter I read a comment from the leader of a German delegation of Christian Social Democrats who happen to be visiting Ottawa today:

"We are all concerned and surprised that in quaint Canada, this kind of thing could happen,”  he wrote. “Everybody expects Canada to be remote from all the troubles of the world, peaceful and quiet and now we have this situation.”

This evening I listened to a CBC broadcaster interviewing someone in the government. She asked him whether he thought this event would change the way Canada operates. 'I notice that when the guards today, the RCMP, wanted people to move away, they said "Please move back. Please move." I don't think you'd hear that in Washington, DC. Do you think that will change here?' she asked her respondent.

'Oh, don't even suggest it,' he said in alarm. 'We're Canadians!'

Malala's visit and her honorary citizenship ceremony: both cancelled. For today, anyway.

The Centennial Flame, also called the Eternal Flame, in front of Parliament. I took this picture when I attended a conference in Ottawa last November.