Thursday, September 14, 2006

Montréal Shootings

It turns out that my great-nephew spent two hours holed up in a classroom in Dawson College yesterday while a nut was shooting up his school and his classmates. He's fine, physically anyway, and his girlfriend who also attends the college was off campus when the shooting began.
I tried to think of something profound to say about the nature of violence in our society but I've come up blank. We are violent; we are hunters, predators, meateaters. And some of us can't seem to get beyond that. But why should we when our leaders can't see beyond that, either? When the answer to every international crisis is to threaten force, to use force, to bomb innocents, to invade sovreign nations, to lock people away, to execute, to intimidate, to torture.
Perhaps violence is the nature of our society.

1 comment:

  1. Three things:

    1) as a person who works in a post secondary institute this was frightening news

    2) it reminded me of the December 6 Polytechnique shootings in Montreal.

    3) I'm glad physically your great nephew is ok. Emotionally I hope Dawson College offers grief/counselling sessions.

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