It is a mother who is speaking to you today. A tearful mother in front of so much gratuitous violence. A mother who does not yet understand how we can and we have been able for so long to allow the circulation of prohibited firearms in a city like Montreal. These guns that kill our children, our teenagers in battles and settling of scores that do not even concern them. Wrong place, wrong time. Just too bad ! One less life. One more.
In August 1993, my own son, then 18, was the victim of one of these barbarities. My family and I still call this act of gratuitous violence “the accident”. We still fail to name the unnameable.
Around 2 a.m. on that warm and mild August night, my son and his girlfriend were returning from a meeting in a bar on Saint-Laurent Boulevard with their friends. They had reunited after their day’s work. These two were returning quietly to their apartment.
As they had quarreled in the evening, they were kissing on a street corner to end their argument. A car approached them. My son will tell me later: “You see, mom, you brought up me well, I thought they needed some information and I stood in front of my girlfriend to find out what they were looking for!” It was bad for him! It was at this point that an individual rolled down the rear window of the vehicle, took out a crosscut and fired at them.
My son collapsed on the sidewalk while his girlfriend, having received a few pellets in the breast and arm, ran off to seek help at the convenience store nearby.
Worse, my seriously ill son tried to get up. The car, which had already started to leave, backed up and pulled again in his direction, leaving him for dead.
Trauma
My son is still alive. But some days, so little. Survivor, one should say. And in what state! At that time, he had open heart surgery, one foot of the small intestine and half of his liver removed. Physically, he recovered, although he still lives with several pellets in his body. According to the surgeon, if they are removed, he will die.
But he still does not get over it. He dies a little every day with the trauma of this attack. True, there was a trial, the culprits were arrested and sentenced to a short term.
What remains in my head and which does not want to be extinguished, is this sentence that one of the accused came to say in court: “We fired at random because we did not want to come back empty-handed.” ! ”
It took someone to shoot at to assuage their anger. This “accident” dates back 28 years! And today, I have to admit that we are still there.
Illegal firearms are still in circulation and more and more and nothing is done. NOTHING to prevent their possession, NOTHING to stop the armed individuals who use them to accumulate points with their gang and who get away with impunity.
Who will be able to give an answer to these why too big for the parents, the friends in mourning?
Everything is allowed
The flowers placed near the pools of blood, left by the bodies of young adolescents who “passed by” and who have nothing to do with this gratuitous violence, the beautiful speeches full of promises never kept towards the inconsolable parents of the loss of their child and which await reparation, these studies on the subject, stuffed with pious wishes which never succeed, – except to conclude that it is terrible, all that -, the tears shed by these same politicians who come out with a beautiful image, but who do not commit themselves to this thorny subject, but vital. Our children’s lives are at stake! Has anyone thought of that?
And the perpetrators of these massacres, these serial killers get away with it, most of the time. Not caught, not punished. Everything is allowed in this country! The lives they kill don’t matter to them? And what about in the eyes of those who must protect the lives of our children?
We are on the eve of the terrible anniversary of the Polytechnique massacre which took place in 1989. Someone pointed out to me a few days ago that we should stop celebrating this bloody anniversary. “It seems to me that we should stop talking about this!” But we can’t stop talking about it. How to forget ? The street killings that take innocent children away from their parents continue over and over again. We haven’t moved forward one iota. What are we waiting for ?
Are all our children, adolescents and young adults going to have to perish on street corners, under gunshot, bladed weapons that circulate with impunity, again and again, to act? Whether their names are Thomas, Jannai, Meriem or even Etienne and all the others who have suffered the same fate, they should never be forgotten.
Today, I join all these inconsolable parents who have lost what they had most precious, sweeter, more tender, a gift of life and which gratuitous violence has taken from them.
Tonight, let’s not go home empty-handed and take action!