Drama in Montreal

As you may have heard, we had a very exciting day here in Montreal. To sum it up, yesterday around lunch time a kid walked into a CEGEP and started shooting people a la Columbine. I'm not going to go into too much detail about the events since that's all over the news right now. What I want to talk about is the reporting.

I appreciate the fact that CBC et al want to keep us up-to-the minute for these events. Personally, I was in Toronto driving to the airport when I heard about it. I text messaged Marie-Pierre (who was in Montreal) and she didn't even know something was going on. This theme was echoed by the reporters in Toronto and those at the scene in Montreal. The folks in Toronto on CBC Radio actually knew more about what was going on than the people standing at the yellow police line. What's wrong here? I suppose it's due to the confusion at the site.

Speaking of which, Concordia University (where I am now a student) opened up its doors to the CEGEP to help curb and resolve all of the confusion. Good for them! And CBC rightly interviewed a few people from Concordia about the days events.

Here's where it gets a little weird. One may ask "Hey, what's a CEGEP?" and if you live outside Canada I fully expect you not to know. In fact, if you live outside Quebec, I expect you to be a little fuzzy on the idea, but you should at least know, especially if you ever expect to hire someone raised in Quebec! Anyway, a CEGEP is like a Jr. College to which all University-bound students in Quebec go. It's like post-High School or, more appropriately, pre-University. It's such an ingrained part of Quebec culture that I've actually had to switch from saying "College" to "University" to describe my Bachelor's degree. In the United States we use the terms interchangeably, but they are very different things in Quebec. College=CEGEP and University=well, University!

So this reporter from Toronto (i.e. "The only place in Canada that really matters") on CBC asked a Concordia student how their opinions of the Dawson College students have changed in light of the shootings. She asked something along the lines of "How do you now feel about these students who maybe you've played sports against or had rivalries with?". First off, what is he going to say? "I think they're stupid"? No! What a loaded question. Secondly (and more obviously for people in Quebec), asking a question like that is like asking a High School soccer team about their arch-rival the local Kindergarten class! CEGEPs and Universities don't compete! They supplement!

One last thing, our dear Prime Minister called this a "cowardly" act. I have a little bit of a problem with this. I don't think this kid was a coward at all. I think he was very brave. Now, having said that, I feel I must qualify my statements by asking you, the reader, to not automatically equate bravery with something good. Just because someone does something brave doesn't automatically make what he did worthy. I think it takes a lot of balls to walk into a public place and disrespect the social contract. So I think this kid was very courageous..... a friggin' idiot, but courageous. He clearly needed some attention that he wasn't getting. Maybe people call him "cowardly" because he wasn't able to face up to the REAL problems he was having. If that's the case then, of course, I have to agree. Also, please don't think that I'm saying this kid is a hero or glorifying what he did. Far from it. I feel that he had issues that were unresolved and they acted themselves out in a very violent and inappropriate way.

Anyway, this is a long rant about a very unfortunate situation. I'll close by saying that I feel very bad about what happened there and I'm glad for all of the students who managed to get out safely and unharmed.