Mother’s Day was not a particularly happy occasion this year.
While I revelled in having home my two daughters and while we joked and laughed and talked as normal, our celebration – as well as those in other houses around our town and area – was overshadowed by a tragedy which had taken place earlier in the week in the nearby town of Kyle, Sask.
On Wednesday, May 7, in the early evening, horror hit that town of about 500 when two women were gunned down in the convenience store of the local Esso service station.
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The two – aged 44 and 53 – were in the prime of their lives. One was working a shift at the store, the other was her friend who had walked across the road to have coffee with her.
One woman was shot in the shoulder and neck and died behind the counter.
The other was shot in the chest and died near a side exit to the station.
An undisclosed amount of cash was stolen. There was no sign of a struggle.
Both were mothers. Both were mourned on Mother’s Day, not just by their families and friends and community, but by many who never knew them but who sense the pain and fear of their last moments, and even gripped by it.
Two suspects were arrested, both from Powell River, B.C.
Over the course of the next couple of days, I talked to several people from that community, and the message was the same: a town in shock.
As one person said to me, this is not the sort of thing that happens in small-town Saskatchewan.
It happens in big cities, far away, not in peaceful communities where people don’t lock their doors at night and often leave their keys in their vehicles.
Another said this is the end of innocence, for Kyle itself and for a lot of other small towns.
I questioned several RCMP officers about what might have been done to prevent his tragedy. They all said the same thing: in a word, nothing. It was chance they said, a random act of violence.
A few years ago in our elementary school, we ran a program called “it’s OK to say no,” teaching children about good and bad touching and abuse in general, although that word wasn’t used.
Our school board was criticized by some long-time residents who said “that sort of thing doesn’t happen here.”
It can, it does, it has.
