These three words, these three places have haunted me since we have been unable to make sense of these eight absurd deaths, around the loss of these men, women, children, of all the seriously injured innocents, of families and loved ones forever bruised by this immense lack. Dozens of people affected closely, hundreds further away who wonder, in vain: but why?
In Sainte-Rose, toddlers and their educators, targeted by a ram-bus last month. In Amqui, walkers randomly hit by a van. Rue Bélanger in Rosemont, three members of a family stabbed to death by the son last Thursday.
In the face of so much horror, pain, shared incomprehension, we try to find scraps of explanation, a thin glimmer of meaning to cling to.
Journalists rushed to the scene. The stuffed animals, the flowers, the lanterns, the whole panoply inseparable from these events began to pile up, like colored pebbles on the path of the duty of memory. The leaders of the political parties, the deputies collected themselves, did what they had to do: good.
I am, we are all paralyzed, overwhelmed by events, overwhelmed by images, indignant at times before assumptions or hazardous solutions. We all watch, in search of explanations in the face of the inexplicable. Then we close our eyes, but the images flood into our heads, unbearable.
The unbearable entered the life of peaceful people, without history, of families henceforth amazed and suffering.
We do not know where to classify these three dramas, unbearable in a quiet society like Quebec. Is it miscellaneous? Is it about society or individuals? What connects the three events, since we have connected them all? Because there is in these three abominations an apparent absence of premeditation, therefore of meaning.
We try to find explanations on the side of mental illness in the three killers. They all have different profiles. As far as we know at the moment, they were men without history, although taciturn. Three middle-aged men, 19 to 40. Does mental health have a broad back? The future will tell us what the exact mental profile of the three killers was. One thing is certain, deinstitutionalization, the pandemic, social networks have revealed and put in front of us mental illness, the problems related to it, and the immense holes and limits of the care and prevention system.
Thousands of suffering people are unable to meet professionals. Psychiatric services are overwhelmed, or terribly far away. Everything in our health system tells us that we don’t give a damn…
To say that these three cases are mental illness is a bit to concede that there will be others, since our society, if it now speaks freely of depression and mental disorders, can hardly cure all the evil- be everyday.
Pointing out mental illness means finding an explanation that will remain a dead letter, since nothing concrete can be done. He’s the perfect culprit.
Can we speak of a contagion effect? The sad litany of places – Laval, Amqui, Rosemont – returns. She suggests that diseased minds were fascinated by the evil unfolding before their perverted eyes. Possible. The media was showing, desperately trying to find a shred of meaning. Social networks commented, often hateful speech, calling for revenge, threatening the worst. Something to warm up the most fragile, or the most twisted.
Laval, Amqui, Rosemont. We can add Quebec, on Halloween 2020. We say to ourselves: can we make sense of what is happening in our neighbors, where shootings are almost daily? The work of misfits, there too, but it stops there. You cannot compare the two companies. In the United States, access to firearms is a game-changer. And calls for a reaction that we don’t want: teachers who arm themselves, class blackboards that become armored boxes to protect children… No. We don’t want to live in this life-integrated, normalized, banal psychosis. We are not them.
So what ?
We have to assume that there will be others. That the gratuitous, sick, enlightened gesture exists and will always exist. That the efforts put on the side of prevention will not contain everything. Laval, Amqui, Rosemont: these are news items. And the various facts speak of society. And society is us. Let’s be less rude to each other on a daily basis. We smile. Let’s greet each other, let’s not be systematically suspicious. Let’s put meaning in our words, light in our eyes, solidarity between us. That would be a start…