BRUSSELS REMEMBERS
People observe a minute of silence at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels on Wednesday. Bombs exploded Tuesday at the city’s airport and a metro station, killing and wounding scores of people as a European capital was again locked down amid a security thre
After Janine Denis heard about the attacks in Brussels, she wanted to join others at a vigil held outside the Belgium embassy Wednesday night to grieve the loss of so many people in the city where she had lived for five years.
About 20 people gathered outside the embassy on Albert Street for the vigil organized by the European Students Association at Carleton University.
“It felt very close to home, and now it feels closer,” said Denis, holding flowers. “All of our friends are still there, so to wake up in the morning to see all of your friends checking in to say they are still alive, it’s kind of gut-wrenching.”
Denis, 30, just moved back to Ottawa a year ago, around the same time the Jan. 7 Charlie Hebdo attack was carried out in Paris, where her fiancé’s family lives.
The association’s president, Fidan Karimli, 23, said her sister had flown to London from the Brussels airport the day before the attacks.
“It’s terrible and shocking what happening. It’s the heart of Europe,” she said. “This terrorist attack was a message, and it’s hard to believe that it actually happened.”
Several Brussels residents in Ottawa on an exchange program with Carleton University described the stress of trying to reach friends and family back home.
Marie El Khoury, a Belgian law student studying for a semester at Carleton, said she awoke to dozens of messages from friends and family about the attack. “I feel all my family is getting together in Belgium, so I think ( joining the Ottawa vigil is) the right thing to do because I’m far away,”
Earlier in the day, Ottawa residents showed their support by signing a book of condolence for the victims of the attacks and their families set up outside the Belgian embassy.
Gerry Harrington was among the first to sign the book and said Tuesday’s attacks in Brussels won’t stop him from visiting the nearby Belgian city of Liège next month.
“I’m definitely not reconsidering,” he said. “And I think that’s important.”
Belgian Ambassador Raoul Delcorde and First Secretary Jonas De Meyer quietly welcomed supporters before a sculpture, appropriately titled We Are One, in the lobby of the Constitution Square buildings on Albert Street.
“In the U.K., we are very close friends and allies of Belgium,” said Howard Drake, British High Commissioner to Canada. “We are a neighbouring country, we have a very long history together, and it has been felt very strongly in my country, as it has in the rest of Europe and throughout the world.
“It was really important for me, as the British High Commissioner here, to show support to my good friend, my Belgian colleague. It was a truly dreadful act.”
Lithuanian Ambassador Vytautas Zalys also paid his respects, along with well-wishers like Peggy Zaine, who works in the fitness centre in the building housing the Belgian embassy.
“I’m just horrified by what happened, and can’t imagine what the families are going through,” said Zaine, “what the people who work in the airport and the subway are going through.”
The entries to the book of condolences will be compiled and presented to the Belgian’s minister of foreign affairs, Didier Reynders.
The book of condolences is open to the public until 4 p.m. Thursday..