Harper ‘stood his ground’ in face of danger
OTTAWA — Three hours into a Wednesday morning shift, the constable stood in the south corridor of Centre Block, chatting with another member of the House of Commons security force as MPs arrived for their weekly caucus meeting.
A few bored journalists and camera operators congregated around the rotunda inside the Centre Block doors.
The attack that killed a Canadian Forces member in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu two days earlier was still fresh news, and the two men — the constable in uniform, his colleague in plain clothes — speculated about whether something like that could ever happen on Parliament Hill. Then it did. “Gun! Gun! Gun!” someone yelled from the main doors, shortly before 10 a.m. Then a shot. “I smelled powder and I saw my buddy beside me draw his firearm,” said the constable, a 30-year veteran of Parliament Hill security who asked not to be named. A year later, he still worries about someone targeting his family.
“I said, this is tango time. We’re getting hit. I’m not sure what type of attack we’re getting but in hindsight I’m thinking there’s a possibility the 18 are coming,” he said, in reference to the Toronto 18 terror group that planned to attack Parliament and behead the prime minister.
“I’m scared s---less. We’re freaking out.”
The constable kicked open the door of the small Commonwealth Room adjacent to the Reading Room, where about 150 MPs, senators and staff were gathered for caucus.
Inside, it was a scene of pandemonium.
“Everybody wants to get out. Everybody is nervous. Everybody is scared. Everybody is white.”
The constable held up his hands and told everyone to go back into caucus room.
The constable locked the Commonwealth Room door from the inside.
Where was the prime minister, he wondered?
He cut through the room and opened the connecting door to the Reading Room.
From outside in the Hall of Honour, he heard a series of shots, as gunman Michael Zehaf-Bibeau sprinted down the hall towards the Library of Parliament and the constable’s colleagues fired at him.
On his radio, he heard the message, “Outside shot. Outside gun.” One of the guards was confused and thought the shots were coming from outside the building. Then another transmission, “Shots fired in Centre Block.”
Conservative staffers, MPs and senators who had heard the gunshots from a few metres away began barricading the doors. Some took down flags that were arrayed behind the small stage at the front of the room, to use the poles as weapons.
“Where is he?” the constable asked, meaning Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Fingers pointed toward the northeast corner of the room, where a door inset in the wood-panelled wall stood slightly ajar.
The closet is barely four feet in each direction, further cramped by conduit and wiring panels on the walls. With the door closed, it is completely dark and the only sound is a low hum of a cooling fan.
Harper stood inside, facing the door. He seemed calm, not frightened, the constable recalls.
“He was waiting for whoever was supposed to protect him,” the constable said. “His eyes were looking at me like he wanted to know what was going on.
“I looked at him and said, ‘Are you OK?’ He looked at me and said, ‘Yes.’ ”
Again, the constable says, he feared a group of terrorists barging in and taking Harper hostage.
“I said, ‘Stay there.’ He nodded.”
Here, the constable’s account differs from the story that has evolved about that day — that his security team had followed protocol by forcing Harper into the closet for his safety.
In fact, says the constable, there was no RCMP security detail in the room at the time Harper went into the closet. Until the constable arrived moments after the shooting, there were no House of Commons security staff there, either.
Under the rules in place at the time, the prime minister’s RCMP protective detail was required to wait outside of Centre Block after handing him off to plain clothes House of Commons guards.
But the plain clothes guards, who stood outside of the caucus room while the meeting was underway, had been locked out by the caucus members when the shooting began.
The constable says he learned that, moments after the first shots, Harper had been spirited into the small electrical utility closet not by security but by staff members — possibly Myles Atwood, the prime minister’s special assistant — and an Ontario senator whose name he does not recall.
(Atwood did not respond to a request for comment.)
He addressed the caucus, telling them there were maybe one or two attackers, based on what he heard on his radio. “Stay here, we’ll be safe.” The constable briefly considered giving Harper his bulletproof Kevlar vest but instead positioned himself closer to the centre of the room, ready to respond if any of the doors were breached.
The constable went on his radio to tell his dispatcher that the prime minister, his ministers and everyone else in the caucus were safe.
The constable estimates that, for about eight minutes, he was the only security official in the room. He was armed only with a baton. To him, it felt like hours.
Then, finally, he heard knocks on the door.
The sound reminded him of the traditional knock at his Freemason meetings, where he once served in the ceremonial position of Inner Guard, the last line of defence should the Outside Guard be overcome and the lodge breached.
“Who comes here?” he asked, the Masonic response.
Then the radio crackled again. “Open the door, it’s me.” He recognized the voice of his sergeant. “I’m with the RCMP and our guys. We’re coming to get the PM.”
The constable told the caucus members to open the doors.
“Then I go to see the PM. I say, ‘Sir, it’s the RCMP with our guys. We’re getting you out.’ ” Harper nodded. A group of about five or six RCMP and House of Commons security guards went directly to the closet. They whisked Harper away, out into the Hall of Honour where, minutes earlier, the firefight raged.
At the end of the hall, Zehaf-Bibeau’s bullet-riddled body lay in a pool of blood.
Once Harper was gone, the caucus began to applaud.
While the RCMP and Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers received much of the credit for defending Parliament, the constable believes the role of House of Commons security was never properly explained.
He believes credit for keeping Harper and everyone else on the Hill safe goes to his “brothers” in House of Commons security, including Alain Gervais, the guard who protected the New Democrat caucus across the Hall; those who fired at and killed the gunman; and especially Samearn Son, the guard who was shot in the leg by ZehafBibeau inside the doors of Centre Block.
“What the guys did that day is truly heroic,” he said. “Everybody put their life in jeopardy to make sure everyone got home.”
The constable says he was disappointed that some questioned that Harper took cover in the caucus room closet.
“It depicts him as being a coward, which is not true. He listened to my instructions,” he said.
“The guy was very courageous. He stood his ground.”