“It was the perfect day for some welcome healing – a warm, midautumn sun, mostly blue skies and a gentle breeze.
The specific occasion was to pay tribute to the average citizens and first responders who raced to help, but could not, one year ago; to the police and security personnel who risked their own lives to protect others – but most of all to the two soldiers who were hunted down and killed for reasons that will forever escape.
The larger occasion brought together the country’s three most significant personalities of the moment: Stephen Harper, the current Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, the prime-minister-designate and David Johnston, the Governor-General who will hand power from Mr. Harper to Mr. Trudeau on Nov. 4,” wrote Roy MacGregor for The Globe and Mail on Thursday October 22, 2015.
MacGregor continued, “With their families present, with a 21-gun salute echoing across the Ottawa River toward the orange hills of Gatineau and with a CF-18 flypast in the “missing man” formation, the two fallen soldiers were honoured with wreaths and tributes and prayers.
A year ago, after the attacker had cowardly shot Cpl. Cirillo in the back – ordinary citizens desperately trying to save the young soldier in the minutes before paramedics could get there – the attacker had raced to Parliament Hill. Once there, he bounded up the steps below the Peace Tower and barged into the Centre Block, wounding a security guard who tried to intercept him and unleashing a series of rifle shots that terrified Hill workers and politicians in caucus before he was himself brought down in a hail of bullets.”
Read the full article here.
Raymond Matt, CFP, CLU, TEP, CHS
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