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Calling all Montreal forum members!

Char Ell

By Char Ell
in Ahto Spaceport Cantina

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Char Ell Newbie

Char Ell

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Here is hoping all our Montreal forum members and their family members were not among those involved in today's horrific tragedy at Dawson College. Of course nobody should have been on the receiving end of today's shooting rampage.

 

MSNBC article - "Man opens fire at Canadian school, killing one"

 

My sincere and heartfelt condolences to those whose lives were affected by this crazed madman. I would love to hear from our Montreal forum members because I hope you all are OK and would feel better knowing that was the case.

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Darth333 Newbie

Darth333

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My office is just a few kilometers away from that college and we started to hear the emergency vehicles around 1 PM. My secretary was wondering what was going on so she turned the radio on and heard about the shooting that was still ongoing. Everybody here was shocked.

 

I hope that madman is either arrested or kept away from society.
He was killed by a police officer (edit: latest news are that the police shot him in the leg and then he killed himself). There are 20 injured and one dead young woman. Sad news.

 

Canadian news:

tv:

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/09/14/gunman-shooting.html

Montreal gazette:

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=1279e65c-9859-44e7-b365-03feebd733b1&k=44689

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igyman Newbie

igyman

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I wonder why the guy's family didn't do anything when they noticed a change in his behavior. Sure, he's 25, but he must have some contact with his family and they must have noticed something. If something had been done in due time perhaps this tragedy could have been avoided.

 

What's done is done, unfortunately, so RIP to all the victims. I really don't know what else to say.

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Fiestainabox Newbie

Fiestainabox

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I live nearly in a totall different province, but I'm still mad when stuff like this happens.

 

My Nutjob bus Driver did have a good point earlier today.

 

"Why not kill yourself instead of killing random people? If you hate yourself, you take it out on yourself, not somebody who actually has a future."

 

Not his exact words(He is a weirdo anyway) but I blended it with my opinion.

 

My Condolences to the people who have to suffer to do a person with a low self-esteem.

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lukeiamyourdad Newbie

lukeiamyourdad

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It was really nice of cutmeister to send me a pm to ask me if I was ok :)

 

Yes, I'm perfectly fine.

 

I was at the University of Montreal several miles up north when the events happened. I had no idea of what was going on down south until a girl in class warned us around 2:30 pm that the green metro (subway) line might be closed due to a shooting at Dawson College.

 

At the moment everyone's reaction was just..normal so to speak. Everyone thought, little teenager with a gun, tried to scare someone, injured him, something unimportant. No offense to the US posters, but at the moment, I told myself that it was nothing big since Columbine-like events only happen south of the border. So sort of denial if you want.

 

The city life up north kept going like if nothing had happened until I got home. My mother came to me and said:"Thank God, you're back." My mother is usually pretty paranoid and I knew about some shooting down at Dawson. She pointed me to the TV screen and I finally realized the magnitude of what had happened.

 

This morning (or rather Thursday morning), people on the metro were a lot more silent the usual. There were whispers here and there about the events. Life goes on like it always does.

 

I offer my sincere condolences to the family of the victim and hope the best for the injured ones. Most of them are ok now, but 4 are still in a critical state. One is in a deep coma and I have no idea about the others.

 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------

 

In a way, it is time for questioning too. Being in political science, I have to ask questions about everything. I do anyway. Why did this happen?

The reasons seemed shady at first and they always are. This Gill guy was disturbed, no doubt about it, but you don't buy a semi-automatic carbine, drive a car full of ammo down to Dawson and plan to kill as many as you can just for little angst.

I

was quite happy in the morning when psychologists, when asked about violence in the various medias (movie, TV, video games) made sure to mention that for the huge majority of consumers of violent entertainment, a violent game or movie won't make us go on killing rampages. Of course, that was on the french CBC. Other less...credible or honorable, if I can use the term, news sources started the bashing already. Video games, movies, TV, Marilyn Manson, Death Metal, etc. all got their share of finger-pointing.

 

Others are questioning Harper about his willingness to make the gun registry program less restricting. The debate will rage on for the next few weeks here in Canada and I'll be sure to follow. For those that don't know about it, it was created after the "Polytechnique" shooting in 1989 when Marc Lepine shot 14 women with a hunting rifle. The program was then created, the Liberals promising it would cost 2 million dollars. Except that now, the program costs 2 billion dollars, is rather uneffective and they haven't completed the installation of the computer systems. It was meant to "control" hunting rifles but in the end, over 80% of incidents related to guns, from murders to suicides and simple accidents, were done or caused by registered weapons.

 

Note that the weapons used by Gill were all legal in Canada under restrictions, but anyone can get them. Apparently, they were also registered.

 

Sadly, the goth community will be again under the fires of the moralists. I know quite a few goth guys and gals here and they aren't maniacal wannabee murderers. They were quite sociable and very nice too. I'm not a fan of the way they dress or their taste in everything but I also know for a fact that 99% of them are really nice people.

 

Gill's blog, that has now been taken down, revealed quite a bit about him. I won't go into the details, but there is uncanny ressemblance between his attitude toward society and the one of the Columbine killers. Both blamed jocks for their problems. Gill also mentions jock bullying, how society and noone understands him and how the world sucks. You get the idea.

I know that I seem to give the guy too much of my interest when he doesn't deserve it, but looking into his case might give us tips to prevent such events to happen in the future. I realize that not all cases can be prevented, but still, I try to be an idealist and believe that we (as in all of us) can always try to make the world a better place by better understand its problems.

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igyman Newbie

igyman

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I believe he lived with his parents.

 

That's even worse. I mean he lived with them and they didn't care to do something to help him get those kinds of thoughts out of his head. Now he's just a dead crazy b***ard, but with a timely intervention he could have been a productive member of society.

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Jae Onasi Newbie

Jae Onasi

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That's even worse. I mean he lived with them and they didn't care to do something to help him get those kinds of thoughts out of his head. Now he's just a dead crazy b***ard, but with a timely intervention he could have been a productive member of society.

 

They may not have recognized it as a mental health problem, or they may have been working 2 jobs just to keep a roof over their heads, they may not have understood, and he may not have told them. I'd be willing to bet that they never knew he was getting bullied by jocks. They may have had their own problems (alcoholism, substance abuse, chronic illness, the list is endless) that overshadowed what was happening with him. When I was in 9th grade, my dad had a heart attack and bypass surgery, we had 3 deaths in the family in the space of about 6 months, and my mother, who has bipolar, lost it for awhile because of all the stress from those things. As a result, both of them missed the fact that I was miserable from bullying at junior high. Fortunately, my grandma and a couple other adults picked up on it after awhile and helped me get through it. He obviously did not have those same resources available to him.

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Prime Newbie

Prime

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That's even worse. I mean he lived with them and they didn't care to do something to help him get those kinds of thoughts out of his head. Now he's just a dead crazy b***ard, but with a timely intervention he could have been a productive member of society.
Yes, but as Jae says, they might not of had a real insight to the problems. It appears he was a loner, but they likely did not know about what sorts of things he was blogging about...
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lukeiamyourdad Newbie

lukeiamyourdad

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Yes, but as Jae says, they might not of had a real insight to the problems. It appears he was a loner, but they likely did not know about what sorts of things he was blogging about...

 

It could be but even his blog doesn't really give a hint of what he will do.

 

There is some form of web police that scours(sp?) the internet blogs for possible hints of criminal activity and when looking at Gill's own blog, you can make out that he's creepy, but you can't predict that he'll do something like that. There was nothing that could announce the events.

Granted, he had pictures of him with weapons, but they were all legal in Canada.

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