Hellobee Boards

I live in Sydney but I was born and grew up in Ottawa. It is so incredibly surreal - Ottawa is the quietest city ever.
I woke up at 5:30am my time and the news was all over my Facebook - spent about an hour on Skype with my parents and they said the whole city is completely still, no one is out on the roads and the downtown area is still on lockdown.
I'm still in shock I think.

Awful. Call me naive, but stuff like this just doesn't happen around here. It seems a little surreal.

My dad's office in downtown Ottawa was in lockdown all afternoon. Really scary.

It was a very sad and scary day here in Ottawa.

@cookie_dough: that's so frightening. There are always so many people around there. Imagine if it had been a weekend, or in the summer with all the tourists. Hope your family stays safe x

I heard the soldier is a single dad/ =( SO SAD.

Maybe this will get me in trouble but I find it absolutely ridiculous and sad that this post has 12 replies and on any given day one asking what we've had to eat will get upwards of 100.

I was busy yesterday but shocked this thread has no traction. Thinking about all the Canadian bees!

@ScarletBegonia: Thanks! Yes, luckily it wasn't a busy time of day/year. It is still extremely tragic, and my heart goes out to the soldier's family; I can't even begin to imagine what they are going through. But you are right, who knows what would have happened if there had been a lot of people around. I wonder what this will mean for the remberance day ceremony on November 11th, which always takes place at the parliament/war memorial. DH was planning on bringing DD to the ceremony this year...now I'm thinking no.

@Mrs. Tiger: The lockdown has been lifted (and DH is heading back to work this morning!) so it looks like it is over...I really hope it is.

@sslm: @oliviaoblivia: I get where you're coming from, it's a terribly sad and scary event. But I imagine people don't really know what else to say besides that. Tragedies happen all too often and what is there really to discuss or say other than this is so awful and sad?

@cookie_dough: I heard that a school group had just left the war memorial (but I don't know if that's substantiated). It could have been much, much worse. I'm so glad your family wasn't directly affected! Hugs to Ottawa!

@MrsSCB: the thread over the Boston bombing was pages long. If there were an attack on the Capitol building or the White House there would be far more than 12 responses. Tragedies do happen too frequently, but armed gunmen shooting and killing service members and then storming the seat of a country's government does not happen every day. If Washington DC was on lockdown with an unknown number of armed assailants at large it would surely have gotten a response. As for what could be said... Prayers for those in Ottawa, thoughts for our lost service man, etc. It's not hard to show empathy for a city under attack.

They've just arrested a man crossing the police line at the War Memorial while Harper was lasting a wreath.

This is so scary.

@oliviaoblivia: I just looked at the Boston bombing thread and a lot of that was people trying to figure out if runners they knew were there or trying to understand what was actually going on both at the actual marathon and then the ensuing manhunt. Thank goodness the parliament gunman was caught fairly quickly, and more people weren't hurt. But all of this is moot because I don't think it makes sense to compare tragedies. I do think that it's unfair to suggest that people don't care because they didn't feel the need to come onto a public forum and talk about how sad they are. I spoke to my friends IRL yesterday, I contacted my Canadian friends directly. Anyway, I don't really want to derail this discussion any further. As I told my friends, I am very sorry for the man's family and I was terribly sad to hear that this happened. My friend suggested we wear red tomorrow to honor him, and I will be doing that.

@oliviaoblivia: @sslm: @BandDmommy: I had the same thought when I saw my FB newsfeed last night too.

@fairy: I heard this also as I'm an hour outside of Halifax. Hopefully someone just thought they saw something and it turns out to be nothing.

i will say that i was very touched by the pittsburgh penguins playing the national anthem.

@Grace: but the what's your LO's name thread is on the second page. just a bit disappointing i think.

@loki: Sorry, I meant the first page of the boards, not the thread's first page. When the boards are hopping, threads that don't have comments for an hour are quickly bumped to the second or third page.

@Grace: ohhh gotcha. you're right!

@FliegepilzHut: they haven't focused a ton on the shooter, from what i can see.

i just found this on CNN:
"Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was identified by Canadian officials to their American counterparts as the suspected gunman, multiple U.S. officials told CNN.

Bibeau, who was born in 1982, was a convert to Islam and had a history of drug use before he converted, two sources said.

His passport had been confiscated by Canadian authorities when they learned he planned to go fight overseas, a U.S. law enforcement official told CNN's Susan Candiotti. The official said it was not clear when that happened.

Canadian broadcaster CBC reported that Bibeau had a record of drug arrests going back 10 years."