We have met the nd enemy and he is us
Two anniversaries of the most woeful kind occurred this week. One hundred and twelve years ago this Monday, the White Star liner Titanic struck an iceberg four days into the ship’s maiden voyage, taking the lives of more than 1,500 people, the bodies of many of them coming ashore in Halifax.
Thursday, on the other hand, marked four years since a madman, masquerading as a Mountie, drove through the back roads of Nova Scotia, killing 22, and devastating so many more.
The nature of those two tragedies, 98 years apart, says something profound about how the world has changed.
It is this: so many of the past catastrophes we still remember were malevolent acts of nature or horrific accidents: an ocean liner hitting an iceberg; two ships colliding in Halifax Harbour; a spark igniting methane gas in a Pictou Country coal mine; an Atlantic gale sinking a fleet of Lunenburg County fishing boats; an airplane plunging into the waters off Peggys Cove.
In the past two decades, the big, sad things that can never be forgotten are different. Rather than terrible natural disasters, they are so often man-made, caused by something foul deep inside us.
HATRED RUNS AMOK
We hate someone who looks different than we do, whose skin is a different hue, who is a different gender or sexual orientation, who worships a different deity, who supports a different kind of political system.
Some blame the negative influence of mass media for all this malevolence, others, society’s lack of a moral or spiritual core.
Whatever the reason, hatred and anger explode. We see it every day, everywhere in the world: the school shootings, the massacres at places of worship, the killing sprees at locations where people are meant to be happy and safe. The carnage that, for no reason, befalls complete innocents.
Portapique was one of those places: a quiet rural community like so many others in Nova Scotia, with a run of summer cottages, trailers and modest homes many offering a view of the river which gave the settlement its name that flows into the Minas Basin.
Its Wikipedia page says that it has about 100 residents this time of year, but swells to 250 residents in the summer when the air is soft and the sunsets memorable.
‘LIVED LIFE TO THE FULLEST’
Half a century ago, Truro lads used to hop in a car and head for a weekend dance in Portapique.
More recently, as the first ceremony marking the tragedy heard, it was home to people who, as then-premier Iain Rankin said, were the “best parents, stepparents, grandparents and partners” who “loved their children fiercely and lived life to the fullest,” who “enjoyed fishing, birdwatching, hunting, the beach and the outdoors.”
Among the 22 victims, Rankin said three years ago this week, were poets, and fiddle players, horse-back and motor bike riders, men and women who loved to tinker under the hoods of cars, to make pickles and watch the New England Patriots on Sunday afternoon.
They were, added the premier, people who gave back: “nurses who cared for our sick and elderly,” a teacher who inspired our children,” people who rescued animals who needed homes, along with other “community volunteers and heroes” and “hockey parents who cheered on their children in our rinks.”
WE ALL MOURN
There can be no ranking of grief for those touched by tragedy, no deciding that one death matters more than another.
But when some monstrous act has caused a catastrophe of that scale, every one of us mourns.
When no act of God is responsible, we can, on some level, blame only ourselves, humanity, and conclude that evil does walk the earth.
This week, Premier Tim Houston called for two minutes of silence across the province to commemorate the horrors of Portapique. I can only hope that gives some comfort to the parents, children, siblings, friends, and other loved ones of those who died by the gunman’s bullets.
Grief, the experts tell us, does not go away easily, if it ever goes away at all. This is true for individuals, but also for communities that have been through the trauma of loss, what psychologists call communal grief.
FOREVER CHANGED
Random abhorrent acts, like the killings in 2000, change us by making us rethink how our world is ordered. The other day, looking out the window, I saw a man wearing army fatigues, packing some sort of firearm, get out of a van.
It only took a minute to conclude that he was probably a Department of Fisheries and Oceans operative, on the lookout for lawbreakers.
But for a second, the thought did flit through my mind that maybe it was someone masquerading as a law enforcement officer, rather than the real deal.
I know that sounds like I believe the eclipse was a sign from God to repent our sins — I do not — but these are just the days in which we live.
As Walt Kelly’s cartoon Pogo said back in 1970, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
But along with that grim thought, I cling to something else. That there is a reason we must never forget the names of the 22 victims of Portapique: Heidi Stevenson, Lisa Mccully, Tom Bagley, Kristen Beaton, Jaime and Greg Blair, Peter and Joy Bond, Corrie Ellison, Gina Goulet, Joey Webber, Dawn Madsen and Frank Gulenchyn, Sean Mcleod and Alanna Jenkins, Heather O’brien, Jolene Oliver, Aaron and Emily Tuck, Lillian Campbell Hyslop, Joanne Thomas and John Zahl.
Because people loved them, and from all accounts they made their shortened time here count. But also, because at some point those who mourn them will be gone.
And we must remember the terrible thing that happened to them in the hope that we learn from it. And never let something like it happen again.