The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Visitors arrive to pay respects to victims
PORTAPIQUE — From Pictou, they came.
And, also from Little Cove, Bible Hill, Dartmouth, even as far away as Bridgewater and who knows where else.
A steady stream of complete strangers to the families and victims of this week's unfathomable massacre of innocent victims. All driven by the same, sometimes undefinable urge to lay a bouquet of flowers, a plastic candle or to pound a handmade sign into frozen ground at what has become a shrine at the end of Portapique Beach Road.
“I don't know,” said Linda Belliveau, of Little Cove near Amherst, of why she was there, standing in the cold on April 23. “We just kind of felt the need to come here. We just got the map out and just felt better coming here.
“I think everyone in Nova Scotia, we're all grieving this senseless … I don't have words.”
Jordan Hendy and Cindy Henderson drove two hours from Bridgewater to leave their bouquet of flowers among the growing collection of offerings.
“We just want to give our support,” Hendy said. “It's just sad, right? It shouldn't have happened here, really.”
That sentiment was shared by Basil Rose of Dartmouth as he also kneeled to lay flowers in the wake of the “devastating event” that occurred “in probably the most peaceful rural setting anywhere. Well, it's important to pay your respects to everyone that's suffered through this atrocity,” he said. “We don't know anybody personally but you felt like you know them.”
That familiarity stems from hearing the names and seeing the faces all week long of the 22 victims who died so senselessly here and at many other sites of death and destruction.
All at the hands of an obvious madman hell bent on wreaking as much havoc and mayhem as he could deliver before eventually being shot to death by stressed and harried RCMP officers. Officers who could only respond to the latest update over many hours of the murderer's moving-target killing spree.
“It's hard to express, really,” Rose said of the need to spend a few minutes at this spot, where a light sprinkling of morning snow still dotted the ground.
Partly though, he was there as a teacher at Gorsebrook Junior High school to pay respects to high school student Emily Tuck, 17, who died along with her parents Jolene Oliver and Aaron Tuck.
“It's hard to hear the stories,” Rose said. “It's pretty emotional.”
One man, who did not want to be identified, stopped by just to stand at the site in quiet meditation.
“Sad, scared,” he said, of how the events have affected him. But, certainly not defeated.
“I feel hope for the future, absolutely,” he said. “We're strong.”
Another woman stopped by with some family members to post a sign of Love from Pictou.
“To show our support and love,” she said of the reason for her visit. “I have a niece that works in VON over here. It's crazy, I just feel so bad for everybody.”
Joyce Osborne of Bible Hill said she once worked with victim Jamie Blair and stopped by “just to show my respects.”
“She was always sweet,” she said of Jamie, who died along with her husband Greg.
“Her smile was always the first thing when you looked at Jamie. So kind.”
Osborne said the week's events have been “devastating for her."
“On your mind day and night,” she said. “You go to bed thinking about it and you get up thinking about it.
“How do you move on from here? That's a good question. One day at a time. … I just feel bad for the families. Really bad. Heartbreaking, all of the kids that have to go on without their moms and dads.”
As with some others, Theodore May said he wanted to come to the site to offer a prayer.
An exchange student from Vietnam, May had accompanied Belliveau — with whom he is staying — from Little
Cove.
“I think that I have to go here and pray for them,” he said in fragmented English. “I feel a little bit better.”