December 6th, 1989: When the sky is falling

"On every side, wreckage. Debris hurtling into the air and then falling, falling..." 

~~ Jan Karon, Somewhere Safe With Somebody Good

In December 1989 I was young and single, about the age of our Appprentice. I was working in the high school liaison and admissions office of a local university, so very front-line, busy, lots of phone calls and people coming for tours and information.

On December 6th, we heard the news that 28 people had been shot on a college campus in Montreal. Half of them did not survive. Many of them were female engineering students. The shock of identification in our office and on the campus was immediate. This could have been here.

The Montreal massacre was a terrible demonstration of the enormous cost of  hate. In a world where one sky or another seems to be always falling, there is some measure of hope in knowing that we can use remembrance as a tool for change.

"Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness, or else forgiving another." ~~ Jean Paul Richter

Peace dove necklace created from bomb shell casings, at Ten Thousand Villages