Deadly shooting casts pall over Lunar New Year
VANCOUVER — The joy of Lunar New Year parades, parties and other festivities was tempered with sadness on Sunday following a deadly mass shooting in California that appeared to target people celebrating the same occasion.
Though in-person celebrations resumed in much of Canada for the first time since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the shadow of the shooting in Monterey Park, Calif., loomed over some of the proceedings.
A gunman killed 10 people and wounded 10 others at a ballroom dance studio in the city on the eastern edge of Los Angeles composed mostly of Asian immigrants from China or first-generation Asian Americans.
The attack came following a Lunar New Year celebration Saturday night in the heart of the city’s downtown core, where red lanterns decorated the streets
for the Lunar New Year festivities.
While some attending Canada’s largest Lunar New Year parade in Vancouver’s Chinatown had yet to hear the news out of California, Grace Chen said she and her family had the victims on their minds.
“The tragedy happened at a bad time, during Lunar New Year,” said Chen as she took in the parade alongside her husband and son. “We are praying for them.”
Parade-goer Thanh Nguyen said he also heard about the shooting but does not think it poses a major threat north of the boarder.
“I feel more protected here,” Nguyen said. “We have a large community of Asians here and I feel it’s safer in Canada, and people here are kinder.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, one of several dignitaries attending celebrations in Vancouver, said his “heart breaks” for the people whose Lunar New Year celebrations were “violently attacked” and whose lives were forever changed by the shooting.