#OttawaStrong

I have a lot of emotions going through my head right now.  Today was a frightening and devastating day for Canada.  What we know as a peaceful and safe country, all of a sudden became a pretty scary place.

In case you don't know, today a gunman walked up to our National War Memorial in Ottawa and shot a soldier point blank.  He killed a young, 24 year old man, left a small child without a father, and left a country in fear.  And I guess that's what he wanted, and I hate that he succeeded.  

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A gunman also entered our parliament buildings and shot a security guard, walked through the halls right past where our members of parliament were meeting before he was shot and killed.

The scary thing is how little we know about the situation.  We don't know if it was the same gunman, they don't know if there were 2 or 3 of them and how many may still be out there.  We don't know why they did this, if they were working as individuals or as part of a larger group.  

Things like this just don't happen in Canada.  People with guns don't walk up to our most treasured Canadian monuments and kill people.  When watching TV today and seeing all the cops walking around Ottawa with rifles and driving these big SWOT vehicles, I was surprised that they actually even had access to those things.  (I know I shouldn't be surprised by this, but how often do they really need to use those.)  We have Mounties, not FBI and CIA.  We thought that things like this didn't happen in Canada, and unfortunately we were wrong.

It scares me that a Canadian citizen would kill a soldier at our war memorial.  I can't understand how somebody can hate this country so much to disrespect it in such a way. 

So today my thoughts are with the soldier's family, my family members who live in Ottawa, and Canada as a whole as we try to make sense of why this happened.  

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