Words cannot express my sorrow today.
I went to bed in South Africa last night uplifted and excited by news that the 15 March global student climate strike (see this post for more detail) was already underway in New Zealand.
I woke up to hear this on the 6 am news: mass shootings at mosques...in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Wait, what? Christchurch? These people survive earthquakes - they don't do mass shootings.
And terrorist hate killings? New Zealanders don't hate people simply because of their identity.
New Zealand is "the Canada of the Southern Hemisphere", as one of my Australians friends put it in my Facebook feed this morning. That's another way of saying it's a haven for decency, kindness, mutual respect and love of diverse communities.
When Canada lost its innocence to gun violence
This terrible incident in Christchurch has taken me back to 7 December 1989, the day after the Polytechnique massacre in Montreal.
Montreal (and Canada) lost its innocence 6 December 1989 with the massacre of 14 women (mostly engineering students; 14 other people were injured, one a stupidly brave friend of mine) at the Ecole Polytechnique. We were shattered when we woke up to the news of what had happened. I remember my favourite DJ at the time, Terry DiMonte (he's still on air in Montreal) playing Sting's devastatingly appropriate "Fragile" and losing it then as the enormity of what had just happened to our city, our engineering student community, and young women who wanted to become engineers hit me. Someone hated us that much just because we were women who wanted to be engineers.
But being Canada, we came together, loved each other, fought for better gun legislation and kept the conversation about the value of diversity alive and mostly respectful.
Every once in a while someone comes along who doesn't stand for the fundamental Canadian value of "unity in diversity", but interestingly they don't last as their voices get crowded out by the voices of ordinary Canadians saying "that's not who we are - this is who we are".
Too early, but I'll say it anyway
I am confident New Zealanders will uphold each other through the aftermath of this terrible crime, and although they'll be scarred (I don't think the emotions ever truly leave you), they'll be even clearer on what it means to be a New Zealander.
Why am I confident?
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said "they are us" in an interview broadcast on CNN this morning. Those three simple words are so powerful to countering the "othering" which is at the root of such hate and the crimes it engenders. Most of us as a species are better than that.
