| | | elpolvo~
thanks
yes, sad day here in nova scotia.
this whole province has a population
that is less than a million.
other than our one large city
it's mostly small towns and villages.
everyone knows each other,
or the people in the next town or county.
we are all related.
it's all pretty incomprehensible at this point.
nothing like this has ever happened
in this province before this.
in fact, this is, i believe,
the worst mass killing in canadian history.
i'm hearing a number of about 17 people killed
and there might even be a few more
as this person killed people at several locations.
it was premeditated.
he was driving a car that had been done up
to look like an RCMP vehicle
and witnesses say he was wearing
what looked to be an RCMP uniform.
he lived and worked in Dartmouth,
which is basically part of Halifax - our one main city.
however, he had a house and property
in a small town called Portapique
which is on the Bay of Fundy coast between
Bass River and Great Village - both very tiny towns.
Don and I loved that area -- so laid back.
as they showed photos of the towns yesterday
i'm thinking, yup, there's the huge white wooden church
where we bought raspberries off a little table out front
of a house where the owner said his canes had
bucket loads and he had resorted to selling some of them...
and Bass River where there used to be a wooden furniture factory
and we would stop at the tiny general store
to buy Birch Beer soda pop every time we went through.
The post office isn't a heck of a lot bigger than a garden shed.
anyhow, none of what happened is making much sense at this point.
what we know is that this person killed a number of people
around one house -- but maybe more than one -- not sure...
and set fire to some buildings.
he left that area driving back toward Halifax and,
from what I gather, killed more people along the way.
someone posted photos taken near their parents' farm in one of those areas
and there were cars on fire.
people were alerted to him -- news travels like lightning over facebook here in NS
so people knew basically where he was once the word was out.
sounds like he was killed in a gun fight at a truck stop gas bar
before he reached Halifax.
i am down in the southwest part of the province
so nowhere near where all of this happened...
it would be more like 150 miles away, i reckon.
but i knew it was going on as i saw the police bulletins
and the posts people were putting up as it was happening.
so, well, we don't know all that much about the details yet.
i expect we'll hear more today.
what we do know - officially - so far, is that
he killed a female RCMP officer and wounded another.
people are starting to post photos of those who died.
that stuff isn't "official" yet - it's all people posting on FB.
it's very sad -- as i commented above, everyone knows each other ..
it's a real 6 degrees of separation thing here in this province.
one woman was a teacher -- someone posted a photo of a kid
holding up a little poster about her and that he has been watching
video messages she had sent to her students during the covid lockdown
over and over all day.
i read another from someone saying another victim was a nurse in the community.
another a photo of a friend she was was a real spitfire of a woman.
the mother of the officer posted a comment on a FB friend's page.
people are posting a lot on the facebook Nova Scotia kitchen party thread
where people have been posting videos to pass the time
during the "stay the blazes home" pandemic.
playing bagpipes of Amazing Grace and stuff like that.
btw, people here really use facebook here - even differently than elsewhere...
hard to explain what i mean, but it's sort of like integrated
into our IRL lives so that it is a seamless extension of our community.
people have been using it heavily to coordinate during the pandemic..
making masks for each other and picking up groceries for elderly shut-ins,
and any other thing they can do for each other.
that is sort of "normal" here in nova scotia.
so far, sadly, i've noticed all the victims i've heard of have been women.
i'm hoping this isn't going to be like our only other real mass murder in canada
when an engineering student killed 14 female engineering students
at a university in Montreal in 1989.
anyhow, well, we don't have stuff like this happen -- i mean, it's so rare.
even weirder that it happened during this covid thing
when people here in nova scotia are going out of their way
to be kind and helpful to each other
and pull together to get through this.
as i said... incomprehensible.
~croco |
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