I started a new job this week. Change and I are old foes but we're reached a truce over the last few years so the transition into my new place of work wasn't as traumatic as it would have been say, 2 years ago. It was both exciting and frightening at the same time. My new work environment is drastically different than my previous one. For starters, I am now one of the "younger" employees in my office. Previously, I was somewhere in the "middle to older" range. My new office has an 80 year old. In my previous office, I knew the names (and faces) of all 191 staff members. There's something like 178 people in my new office, spread out over 4 floors. As of today, I can recall the names and faces of 10 people and two of them have the same first name so I only have to remember that name once. The bathrooms are much better though. There's actual ventilation in these ones. Not once this week have I walked into the washroom and thought to myself "OMG, what died in here". At my previous place of work, that was almost a daily occurrence. And the people in my new office don't eat lunch together. Almost everyone goes to the food court to buy lunch and then they eat at their desks. I'm a much more social creature than that. My goal for next week is to find a lunch buddy.
I did get to know some of my new co-workers a little better on Wednesday though. My building was put on lock-down until 5:30pm after a fucked-up idiot shot and killed an honour guard and shot and wounded an un-armed guard while running around part of downtown Ottawa and Parliament Hill. It was a home-grown terror attack. In my city. And all I keep thinking is: "How dare he".
Ottawa has a population of just shy of 900,000 people. Before Wednesday's tragic turn of events, Ottawa only had 4 murders on record for the year. That's it. Take Calgary for example. They have just over 1 million people and have had 24 murders so far this year. A lot of people are under the misconception that Ottawa is a boring city. I think we get a bad wrap because we're a government town and all the cool bands forget about us and are drawn to the flashier cities like Montreal and Toronto. But we are fun. We're a perfect mix of big city and small town. Want to get in some culture? We've got museums and the National Arts Centre. Want sports? We've got NHL, CFL and 3 post-secondary schools with great athletics teams. Want something more small town? We have one of the biggest, permanent Farmer's Markets in the country not to mention dozens and dozens of small towns all within a half hour drive from the downtown core. In my mind, it's a perfect city.
Or it was, until Wednesday. I've lived here for a grand total of 13 years. Wednesday is the very first time I've ever questioned my safety here. It's the very first time I haven't felt safe in my own city. And that is a sickening feeling. When I left work that day, I walked a little faster. I paid more attention to my surroundings and more to the point, I paid a lot more attention to the people around me. The man responsible for carrying out the attack on Ottawa wasn't an immigrant. He wasn't some bitter transplant from another country. He was born here. He was raised here. He was a Canadian. And that upsets me so much more than if it had been someone from some where else. He had the opportunity to grow up in this amazing country. He got to experience what freedom and democracy are. He lived in a country that had great social services and access to things like doctors, dentists, specialists etc... without huge price tags. And yet, somehow, he got it in his head that the Canada that I know and love isn't the amazing country that the rest of us know it is. He decided that he needed to attack it. And that's the part that hurts the most.
Yes, we're not the global "boy scouts" that we were once known as being. Over the last couple of decades, we've taken on a much more aggressive role on the world's stage than the peacekeeping role we were once known for, but I think we're still a peaceful nation at heart. We all have to stand up for ourselves and stand up for those who can't look after themselves, right? I'm not going to get into whether or not I think our troops should be over dropping missiles on militants on the other side of the world but I am going to say that despite everything that has happened this week, I have never been prouder to be a Canadian.
I was going to have lunch in our food court today, but I decided that the weather was too nice to hide indoors. I also needed the chance to walk around my city again and to be reminded that it is still a safe place to live. My office is on the opposite side of Parliament from where the attack took place, so things are calmer in my area. My walk at lunch was a peaceful one. I enjoyed seeing all the other people out and about, doing the same thing that I was doing: enjoying the nice weather and our collective freedom.
To the two soldiers that lost their lives this week, Patrice Vincent and Nathan Cirillo - thank you both for your dedication and service to Canada. And to their families - my deepest sympathies and condolences.
It's time for our country to pick itself up, dust ourselves off and show the world that we are still the true north strong and free and that this country is full of millions and millions of people who are very proud to call ourselves Canadian.
Good Night.
Sarah
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| Canadian War Memorial in August 2014 |
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