GUN VIOLENCE ‘HAS TO STOP’
Canadians join march for lives
Two of Cyril Yared’s sisters survived the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., in February. A gunman killed 17 people with a military-style semi-automatic rifle.
“My 15-year-old sister hid in a closet and luckily she was saved; my 17-year-old sister was evacuated and luckily she was saved,” Yared told several hundred Montrealers who gathered at downtown’s Cabot Square on Saturday to demand stricter gun control.
“But we shouldn’t have to be lucky to come home from school at the end of the day.”
Yared said U.S. politicians must stop “prioritizing the right to bear military-style weapons over the right to life,” and accepting political donations from the National Rifle Association, “whose only agenda is to maximize the sale of weapons across the U.S.”
Yared, who attended Marjory Stoneman Douglas and is now studying software engineering at McGill University, was speaking at the March for Our Lives in Montreal, an offshoot of a protest in Washington, D.C., organized by survivors of the Parkland shooting.
The Montreal event included a march to the U.S. consulate on St-Alexandre St. Similar marches were held across North America.
In Montreal, much of the focus was on lax gun laws in the U.S., but flyers were also distributed suggesting a gun-control bill recently introduced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government does not go far enough.
Debbie Desmettre, a former Parkland resident who now lives in Montreal, praised Canada’s stricter gun laws, noting gun violence is less prevalent in her adopted country.
“It absolutely breaks my heart that children in the United States have to participate in activeshooter drills,” she said at the rally. “When I was a kid, it was tornado drills, now it’s active shooter drives.
“This has become the new norm and it is not normal.
“I want my friends and family who are raising kids in the United States to feel as safe as I do here raising my kids in Canada.”
Ellen Malka, who grew up in Montreal and now lives in Parkland, has two daughters at Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
“These kids experienced things that nobody should ever have to, they heard over 150 shots fired into their classrooms, they heard the screams and cries of friends,” Malka said.
“We are marching today not only for the 17 souls who were murdered on that day but for the hundreds of thousands of students who have experienced school shootings worldwide. This has to stop.”
Many in the crowd were Americans, including several studying in Canada.
Originally from New York City, Sophie Rose Saidmehr, a 19-yearold music student at McGill, helped organize the Montreal march.
“I was so horrified by the events that happened on Feb. 14 in Parkland,” she said.
“We decided this has to end. The fact that I can name 10 American mass shootings that have happened in the past year is ridiculous.”
Montreal is “an international city, so by mobilizing for this movement, it places international pressure on American lawmakers,” she said.