There’s an entire generation in Kamloops for whom the words “just watch me” mean nothing.
They harken back to another October day when the Canadian — and, more importantly, the Quebec — governments were dealing with kidnappings, a dead MLA, a country terrified and a prime minister willing to suspend the civil liberties of all of us to deal with it.
It changed who we were as a country, but we didn’t lose that simple reality that makes us different from other countries — the ability to enter Parliament and see our country being governed.
One need only look south of the border to see the kind of security that surrounds the president there, but it didn’t stop an intruder from getting through every barrier and making his way into the White House last month.
Driving to work yesterday (Oct. 22), I heard radio host Henry Small talking about the shootings at the Parliament Buildings.
He said one of the reasons he loved moving to Canada was the simple fact it isn’t the U.S., that Canadians can access their government officials, enter Parliament — have that simple freedom.
Small talked about performing in Ottawa in the 1990s and, post-show, seeing then-prime minister Jean Chretien just walk backstage, no security surrounding him, to talk with the band.
In today’s world, that can’t happen any more, but the danger here is this shooting in Ottawa and the death of a soldier guarding one of the country’s cherished memorials will lead to calls to mimic the kind of security that exists in the U.S.
What we need to look at is that the existing security system worked, with one big flaw.
Someone managed to walk into the House of Commons with a gun. Once there, the system — and brave sergeant-at-arms Kevin Vickers, who likely saw his police background kick into gear — did their jobs, stopped the shooter with everyone in the building locked behind doors.
There is, then, just one question: How did he get through the doors? Where was the protection?
We can’t board an airplane without passing through multiple security checks.
That’s the issue and we can’t let it be twisted into something else that would lead to less access to our Parliament.
I’ve been there many times, but the one visit that sticks in my mind is taking my two older children, at the time just youngsters starting to learn about their world, to Ottawa to celebrate Canada Day on Parliament Hill.
They likely don’t remember it now, but I took them on a tour of the Parliament Buildings and made them look so high up in the sky to see the Canadian flag above the Peace Tower.
The three of us then spread out our blanket on the lawn and enjoyed everything around us.
I was talking with middle son, not yet born when his brother, sister and I drove to Ottawa, and asked him what he thought about the shootings in Ottawa, the death of a soldier and the fact so many people were calling it a terrorist attack.
Among his replies was the observation that the shooting, while a huge tragedy, “doesn’t mean we’re overrun or that a nuke is gonna be dropped on us. It means you need to be alert and not over-react.”
Let’s hope there is no over-reaction, that the centre of our government remains open to its citizens, even if it means we have to go through some additional security to access it.
We’ve dealt with national tragedies like this before. We’ve seen a prime minister strip each of us of our civil rights. But, we always bounced back to be the Canada Henry Small found to a welcome difference from his native U.S.
If we lose that, it doesn’t matter if the shooter was a terrorist, a wacko, a drug-addled miscreant or someone looking to go out in a blaze of glory — we’ve lost what makes us truly Canadian.
Dale Bass is a reporter with Kamloops This Week. Her email address is here. Her blog can be found here. Follow her on Twitter here.
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