The saddest anniversary
Nova Scotia remembers victims of April 2020 tragedy
On such a day as Sunday, the sky could only be funereal grey, drizzle had to fall upon the participants at the memorial run, a cutting wind had no choice but to blow through the parking lot as the bereaved, their faces masked, their collars turned up against the cold, made their way into Truro's First United Church as a piper’s keening lament rose into the afternoon air.
A year is a long time, but not when the unimaginable has happened. Not when your sons, daughters, and grandchildren, your parents, brothers and sisters, have been taken from you in the most horrible of ways.
Not when a global pandemic has prevented you from mourning them as they would, during any other time, be mourned.
Not when 12 months later, you still do not know how what happened somehow happened.
Their loved ones asked for, and received, privacy Sunday entering the ceremony marking the one-year anniversary of Canada's worst mass shooting.
I, therefore, saw them via livestream, as you did: seated in small socially distanced groups which, inside Truro’s largest church, made them look so forlornly alone.
Yet, over and over again, they heard that they were not.
From Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who said, in a recorded message, “All Canadians stand with you and grieve with you. Today, and always,” and also from Nova Scotia Premier Iain Rankin, who talked of the thousands, from across Canada and around the world, who sent their thoughts and prayers and “wanted you to know you were not alone in your grief.”
They heard it from Heather Rankin, who reminded them, in song that they are not alone, and in the words of a poem read by a couple trying to rebuild the devastated community of Portapique.
They heard it in the ringing two minutes of silence that occurred at precisely 3 p.m. across the province, to mark the start of the memorial gathering. They felt it in the heartbreaking dance movements of Sophia Rae, the niece of one of the tragedy’s victims.
They felt it, too, as the prime minister declared that this act of evil “will not define the memories of all those we lost a year ago today, nor will it define the communities that still grieve them.
“Instead, we will remember the kindness and joy of each person taken from us, and the one life claimed before it could even begin."
Trudeau went on to say, “We will remember the strength of their families – families who shared with me stories I will never forget.
"We will remember the courage of the first responders who rushed to the scene. And we will remember the grace of Nova Scotians and of all Canadians in standing together to heal.”
We heard their names as loved ones carried flowers — “a gift of creation,” according to Rev. Valerie Kingsbury, the minister at First United — to place alongside individually inscribed rocks, which, she said, are “filled with
spirit” and will provide “grounding for families and friends who remember and recall them."
Those names are worth repeating again because we must never forget Tom Bagley, Kristen Beaton, Jamie and Greg Blair, and Peter and Joy Bond.
We must hold onto the names and faces of Corrie Ellison, Gina Goulet, Joey Webber, Dawn Madsen, Frank Gulenchyn and Sean McLeod.
We must do what we can to remember that Heather O’Brien, Jolene Oliver, Aaron and Emily Tuck, Lillian Hyslop, Joanne Thomas and John Zahl once walked the earth.
A few of the flower-bearers, for Const. Heidi Stevenson, a 23-year RCMP officer and mother of two, and Alanna Jenkins, a prison guard, lingered momentarily near the front of the church.
A woman bearing those meant to honour and remember Lisa McCully, an elementary school teacher and mother of two, clasped her hands in prayer.
It was hard to watch, even through livestream.
So, we must hope that the families found solace within that church Sunday.
In the words of Brett Kissel, who sang “tough times don't last, tough people do,” and from Johnny Reid’s musical counsel, “I know you’re out there, so keep doing what you do. Because there’s a place up there for people like you.”
Despite their brevity, the lives of their loved ones had meaning, they heard over and over again.
“They live on in you,” Rankin said, “the families who love them, in the friends who long for them, and in the hearts of Nova Scotians, who honour them today and always.”
Kingsbury, the United Church minister, reminded the room that “those no longer with us continue to be a part of air we breathe, the sun that shines, the wind that flows, the rain that waters souls and gardens.”
This we can only hope is so. That, as Kingsbury said, those we love continue to be “with us and among us.”
And that when they are gone, they live through us another day.
Even, perhaps, in a nearly empty church in a Nova Scotia town, on the saddest of April days.