Under cloudy skies and the slightest bit of drizzle, a small group of students gathered outside Dawson College Wednesday morning and prepared for a busy day ahead.
Armed with signs, raincoats, plenty of coffee and a loudspeaker, the 18 young men and women boarded a yellow bus bound for Ottawa shortly after 9 a.m. They planned to arrive on Parliament Hill early Wednesday afternoon with a clear message for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government – Canada’s long gun registry must survive. No matter what.
"We heard last week that the vote (on Bill C-391) was very tight," said second-year law student Michael Lessard. "We wanted to show our support to the MPs that understand that the Canadian population wants to keep the long gun registry … I think that, especially in Quebec, we learned from Polytechnique and Dawson about the things that can happen if we don’t take care of gun control."
Lessard, 18, acknowledged that the vast majority of students on the bus were not at Dawson when the shooting occurred in 2006, but said the scars of the event remain etched on the school, and everyone who enters it.
"It’s something we can still feel at Dawson," he said. "People were very scared after the shooting … but we’ve learned how to support each other, and we knew that there was a government watching over us with the long-gun registry. That helped us to feel more secure. It’s like the Harper government is insulting the memory of (Dawson victim) Anastasia De Sousa and all the victims of the Polytechnique massacre."
As the bus wound its way across bumpy highways toward the nation’s capital, those on board chatted, quietly listened to music and even napped in preparation for the afternoon rally. About an hour before they were scheduled to arrive, the students donned matching T-shirts that read "This is what democracy looks like."
Near the back of the bus, 18-year-old Olesya Akhtemiychuk tried to explain how events like the Polytechnique massacre, which occurred long before she or her peers were even born, could still inspire them to push for the survival of the registry.
"I think young people confront this every day. We had the movie Polytechnique, and many young people saw it. I saw it, and it shocked me. And then we had something so similar happen at Dawson … and even the video game that came out recently (based on) the Dawson shooting. All of these events have emphasized for us that these things happen. Every day, it happens somewhere. It doesn’t stop."
More to come.
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