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A chilling sight.
Jan. 22nd, 2009 09:56 pmI was out by the lake tonight, walking with a coffee in hand, when I saw a large crowd of people hurrying towards me along the intersecting street. There were probably about twenty of them, and they were carrying two large, white objects overhead. At first I assumed that they were university students - coming from four years in Toronto, and the rest before that spent in a sheltered, old Ontario farm community - engineers or the like would be the only answer, since twenty below zero and dark is enough to scare away even the most dedicated performance artists.
In the split second that it took for me to process, I realized, startled, that they were in fact all wearing full military fatigue; many of them wielding rifles. And that the white objects, glaringly reflecting the streetlights in the dark, were sheets, on gurneys or stretchers, covering large person sized lumps.
It was a drill, of course. I live a short walk from the Royal Military College, and they were gone, hurrying back over the bridge and down towards their school as quickly as they had arrived. But it was such an anachronistic thing to see in a Canadian city street. I take safety for granted and as a girl, never hesitate to go out alone at night, even in a city with six maximum security prisons (you can debate my levels of self-delusion if you wish, at another time).
I am so lucky to live in Canada. There is so much love in my heart for this country, and also for every single individual in the Canadian military - I admire them more than anyone else on our messed up planet.
While military might, I know in my gut, is not the answer, all I wish for is a night in which everyone - this whole world over - feels safe to go outside and dance in their respective city's streets.
In the split second that it took for me to process, I realized, startled, that they were in fact all wearing full military fatigue; many of them wielding rifles. And that the white objects, glaringly reflecting the streetlights in the dark, were sheets, on gurneys or stretchers, covering large person sized lumps.
It was a drill, of course. I live a short walk from the Royal Military College, and they were gone, hurrying back over the bridge and down towards their school as quickly as they had arrived. But it was such an anachronistic thing to see in a Canadian city street. I take safety for granted and as a girl, never hesitate to go out alone at night, even in a city with six maximum security prisons (you can debate my levels of self-delusion if you wish, at another time).
I am so lucky to live in Canada. There is so much love in my heart for this country, and also for every single individual in the Canadian military - I admire them more than anyone else on our messed up planet.
While military might, I know in my gut, is not the answer, all I wish for is a night in which everyone - this whole world over - feels safe to go outside and dance in their respective city's streets.
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