Like so many others, Martin Harry first thought the noise he heard in Parliament Hill’s Centre Block yesterday morning was from construction.
But when a security guard told the group he was with to get down, he realized it was much worse.
The entire SeCan staff, along with several spouses, spent 12 hours locked down in the Conservative party’s lounge after a gunman stormed the building/
Harry, the company’s eastern marketing manager, said they had met on Parliament Hill for breakfast and were on a tour with Ontario MP Bev Shipley, who is also chair of the House of Commons’ agriculture committee, when the incident happened.
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“He said, ‘I’ll show you the lounge,’ ” Harry said while still under lock down.
A lounge likely isn’t a highlight on parliamentary tours, but it turned out to be a sanctuary for more than 20 people.
“Fifteen minutes earlier we had toured the library,” he said.
The gunman, identified as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, 32, of Montreal, was near the parliamentary library’s entrance when he was shot and killed by sergeant-at-arms Kevin Vickers.
“We heard it all, the first four shots,” Harry said.
“We thought it was construction and then the security guard was shouting to get down. Then people were nervous.”
The guard instructed them to pile furniture against the door to keep anyone else out, and then they waited.
“Locked in and on the floor,” Harry tweeted at the time.
They had access to water and some candy, but had to create their own porta-potty, Harry said. Later, when the building was declared clear but the lock down was still in place, they were able to use nearby washrooms.
At a downtown hotel, members of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture board also waited.
Norm Hall, president of the Agriculture Producers Association of Saskatchewan, said the board was meeting about a 10-minute walk from Parliament Hill when the downtown area was locked down. Some meetings were delayed while others went ahead ahead.
He said the sound of sirens made people jumpy.
Both the Conservative and NDP caucuses were meeting when the shootings occurred, and photographs the following day showed bullet holes in the doors to the meeting rooms.
Some MPs, including prime minister Stephen Harper, were taken out of the building by security guards while others were included in the lengthy lock down.
Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz was in a safe location, according to his office.
Michelle Rempel of Calgary, minister responsible for Western Economic Diversification, hid under a desk for an hour and at one point tweeted, “Mom im okay Im in hiding.”
Several media outlets reported today that the gunman had hijacked her ministerial car to get close to the building.
That happened after he fatally shot cpl. Nathan Cirillo, a 24-year-old reservist from Hamilton standing guard at the National War Memorial.
It was the second fatal attack on a Canadian soldier last week, raising security concerns across the country.
