In December, 2005, Jane Creba was a 15-year-old Grade 10 student at Toronto's Riverdale Collegiate. On Dec. 26th, she went to Toronto's Yonge Street with her mother and sister to do some shopping.
Yonge Street is one of the city's busiest shopping districts and the day after Christmas, Boxing Day, is the busiest shopping days of the year. Post-Christmas sales abound.
Creba had left her mother and sister and crossed the street to use the washroom at a pizza restaurant. As she left the restaurant she was standing in front of the Foot Locker store when gunfire erupted. Members of two rival gangs became engaged in a dispute in the Eaton's Centre that continued after they left the mall. Several members of the gangs then pulled out guns on the street where shoppers were lined up to go into stores looking for Boxing Day deals. The 15-year-old Creba was shot dead.
The year 2005 became known as "The Year of the Gun" in the city that used to be called "Toronto the Good." The circumstances of the promising student's death was often described as "a senseless act of violence." And it was.
Last week, Canada experienced two terrorist acts within the space of three days. On Monday, Martin Couture-Rouleau, a Muslim convert, sat in his car in the parking lot of a strip mall in St. Jean-sur-Richeleau, Quebec, just south of Montreal. The mall had a military office and Couture-Rouleau was presumably waiting to see military personnel.
When three members of Canada's military were walking through the parking lot, Couture-Rouleau drove into them. One managed to get away, but the other two were struck. Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent was critically injured and later died hospital. The second soldier struck was taken to hospital with less serious injuries. While Couture-Rouleau was fleeing the scene, he took the time to call 911 to say he did it "in the name of Allah." He was shot to death after his car overturned and he climbed out of the vehicle with a large knife and made a move towards the officers.
Two days later Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, carrying a rifle covered by a blanket, walked up to the National War Monument located close to the parliament buildings and shot one of the two soldiers guarding the memorial. Corporal Nathan Cirillo was critically injured and like Vincent, later died in hospital.
The Muslim convert then managed to hijack a cabinet minister's vehicle, drive up to the doors of the Centre Block and storm his way in. After he passed the rooms where the Conservatives and the NDP were holding their weekly caucus meetings, Zehaf-Bibeau was shot dead by Kevin Vickers, Parliament's Sergeant-at-Arms, before he could do any more real damage.
At an Ottawa press conference, RCMP Superintendent Bob Paulson used the expression "senseless violence," to describe the murder of Cirillo. He is not the only one to use that expression to describe the deaths of the corporal and Vincent, but it is troubling that is the view of a man who leads one of the agencies tasked to protect Canadians, not from gangbangers but from terrorists.
It is the crowd that denies terrorism exists that say these incidents in Quebec and Ottawa had absolutely nothing to do with Islam and who say the shooters did what they did because they were disadvantaged, had mental problems or were just criminals. And to these people, including the RCMP Commissioner, the deaths of Vincent and Cirillo were no different than the death of Creba. They were senseless acts of violence.
The Webster-Merriam Dictionary defines "senseless" as something that is done or something that happens for no reason. As Eliana Johnson, writing in the National Review Online notes, senseless is not the opposite of "sensible." The killing of the two members of the Canadian Armed Forces last week had both a reason and a purpose behind it.
Their deaths were unlike the murder of Creba who was not the intended target of a gang fight and died only because she unknowingly ended up the crossfire between two rival gangs.
Couture-Rouleau and Zehaf-Bibeau were inspired by ISIS and radical imams to single out members of the Canadian military
While many people love to hide their heads in the sand and pretend the killing of two Canadian soldiers were merely the result of unfortunate occurrences, these cannot be said to have happened for no reason. Both Couture-Rouleau and Zehaf-Bibeau were inspired by ISIS and radical imams to single out members of the Canadian military because Canada is participating in air strikes in Iraq. Those shootings and the storming of the Parliament Buildings were clearly acts of terror, designed to bring fear to Canadians and to change the way of life the shooters detest. Those who killed Creba had no intention or purpose other than to take out members of opposing gangs.
While the left, including most of the Canadian media, will never change and will always excuse or deny terrorist acts, Canadians are entitled to have a person in charge of the RCMP who refuses to confuse criminal acts of violence with intentional terrorist acts.
Words have meaning. Words matter.
