The Star’s view
In midst of chaos and confusion, Toronto shows its best side,
Something terrible happened in Toronto on Monday. And something outstanding happened as well. The terrible thing was obvious. Aman drove a van south on Yonge St., careering along a busy sidewalk and deliberately targeting innocent people out for a stroll on a sunny afternoon, basking in the warmth of a spring that was late but all the more welcome for that.
Tragically, he succeeded all too well: at least 10 people were killed and others lie broken in hospital, some of them fighting for their lives.
It was a horrific act, made all the worse by coming out of nowhere in the heart of a peaceful city.
The outstanding thing that happened on Monday was less obvious. In fact, much of it involved things that did not happen but well might have in another place or time.
Politicians and police stuck to the facts as they had them. They refused to speculate on what might have been behind the incident, despite the legitimate impatience of journalists and others for instant explanations. They did not feed fear or take advantage of the situation to score cheap political points.
The public, aside from the usual shameful suspects on social media, by and large also refused to indulge in finger-pointing or blame-throwing. There was shock, naturally, that such violence could be visited in the heart of a city that likes to consider itself more than usually immune to such things. But there was very little anger and no evidence of widespread panic that terrorism might have been at the root of the attack.
Officials did not overreact with a major security crackdown that would have escalated the situation and given the impression we were facing a bigger threat. Naturally, police closed off the crime scene along Yonge between Finch and Sheppard Aves. But the security was comparatively mild and most of the transit system kept operating.
Finally, the incident came to a close without further bloodshed. A police officer faced down the driver (identified Monday evening as 25-year-old Alek Minassian of Richmond Hill) and forced him to the ground. This, even though the driver seemed determined to die, courting “suicide by cop” by brandishing a metal object (which turned out to be a cellphone) and calling on the officer who subdued him to “kill me.”
This confrontation could easily have ended in yet another death, and it must have taken remarkable restraint to avoid shooting in the heat of such a charged moment. The driver is alive to face justice and, just as important for the public good, to give his own explanation of why he inflicted this horror.
All this speaks very well of the city we call home. We cannot prevent all violence in our midst; there will always be individuals who lash out for personal or political reasons and take innocent life. But we can do something about how we react collectively when we come under attack.
It would have been all too easy for things to have turned very ugly very quickly in the wake of Monday’s attack.
After all, we are all too aware that in other cities in recent months trucks and vans have been used to kill people for ideological or religious reasons. Barcelona, Nice, London, Stockholm, New York City — all have witnessed vehicles turned into lethal weapons by those motivated by allegiance to a terrorist cause or group.
Based on that, parallels could easily have been drawn to the Yonge St. incident, fuelling fear and suspicion of minorities (Muslims, in particular). But, with few exceptions in the darker recesses of social media, that didn’t happen.
And in fact, by Monday evening, federal officials were downplaying that idea by saying the driver had no known connections to any organized terrorist group and there was no larger threat to national security. That should go a long way toward assuaging public fears about a generalized or continuing danger.
Still, we still need to find out what was behind what happened on Monday. Restraint in spreading doubtful information is good, but the public also deserves to know the full story of what was behind the attack.
Most important, we need to find out what motives the driver might have had. He could have been driven by personal grievances or grudges, or some form of psychological illness or delusion.
And, indeed, it could still turn out that he had some political or ideological motive. Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders pointedly refused to rule out that possibility when questioned on Monday evening, saying only that there wasn’t any evidence of that at the moment. The truth is we have no idea why the driver did what he did.
Already, though, we can say that Toronto, its people and its officials, acquitted themselves well in the first hours after the attack. Fortunate city and country that we are, we have comparatively little experience in dealing with this kind of mass killing, whatever the motive behind it. Yet we managed to face it without over-reacting or making things worse.
And that, in itself, is something to be proud of.
It was a horrific act, made all the worse by coming out of nowhere in the heart of a peaceful city