Being a community newspaper, we don’t typically cover provincial or national news, but with recent tragic events that have taken place in our country and with Remembrance Day just around the corner, I would be remiss if I didn’t comment on these circumstances.
On October 20, 52-year-old Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, a 28 year military man, was run down and killed by a young man who had embraced radical Islam. Vincent was accompanying another warrant officer that was doing an administrative procedure. Vincent offered to help the officer who needed support to complete his duty. At his funeral on November 1, a friend recalls how Vincent always put service before self.
Only two days later 24-year-old Corporal Nathan Cirillo of The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada was shot and killed in Ottawa while he was guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Though Cirillo had a standard issue firearm, it was not loaded with ammunition in accordance with standard practice. He was shot twice in the back at close range by a 32-year-old man who, it has been reported, was addicted to drugs and suffering from a mental illness.
Some people believe that these two soldiers lives were taken away in an attempt to instill fear into the heart of our country. Others question the state of mind of the man who took Cirillo’s life.
Either way, two soldiers died on Canadian soil and their loved ones and all Canadians are left to make sense of two heinous acts that, some say, took away Canada’s innocence.
If it was an attempt to instill fear in the hearts of Canadians, I believe that instead of allowing these terrible acts of violence to corrupt our country’s belief of openness to other cultures and religions, we need to keep our country’s resolve to nurture multiculturalism while steadfastly keeping our own culture alive. By allowing fear and mistrust of people’s beliefs into our collective heart, no matter how different they are from our own, is to give in to terror. I think that these two strong men, that had their lives cut short, would want us to persevere. They would want us to keep the ideals of multiculturalism and openness to new ideas and beliefs that make our country what it is today.
Rest In Peace Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent and Corporal Nathan Cirillo.