{"id":23330,"date":"2019-03-21T18:33:28","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T22:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23330"},"modified":"2019-03-21T18:33:36","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T22:33:36","slug":"brocks-banter-phoenix-from-the-ashes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/brocks-banter-phoenix-from-the-ashes\/","title":{"rendered":"BROCK’S BANTER: Phoenix from the Ashes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their words left a lasting impression,\nregardless of our respective backgrounds, on each and every one of us who had\ncome together to mourn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether we saw the images in a newspaper,\non a news channel, or in a news feed, they left a lasting impression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tragedies were senseless and\nunprovoked, they stirred debate over safety, and, thankfully, it prompted many\npeople to be their best selves, springing into action to help their fellow man,\nwoman and child amidst bloodshed \u2013 or simply doing what they could to bring\ncomfort to communities further away where individuals may have felt helpless\nwatching the devastation unfold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNeighbour is the other person, every\nsingle person,\u201d said one religious leader. \u201cSometimes it is a very different\nother person who travels down the same road and sometimes falters and falls, is\nunjustly tricked, or even cruelly beaten down. Being in God\u2019s company is to\nknow, and even show love and mercy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were sentiments that echoed around\nthe room, offered in varying ways from leaders of equally various faiths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Canada I know and the communities I\nhave grown up in have always been secure and strong enough to both accommodate\nand honour our differences: differences of opinions, beliefs, expressions and\nthoughts because, at our core, I believe what we share in common \u2013 our hopes,\nour dreams, and especially our vulnerabilities \u2013 can be used for a greater\npurpose and that is to bring us and bind us together in a spirit not of\ncompetition, but compassion,\u201d offered another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And they just kept on coming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe stand with our brothers and sisters of\nfaiths in denouncing these senseless acts of violence and pray that our Muslim\nbrothers and sisters continue to feel secure and safe to practice their faith\nin their sacred spaces,\u201d said the last speaker. \u201cWe need to give thanks to God\nfor the safety and security we enjoy in this country and for the freedom to\nlive lives of faith. But, we appreciate what a violation this event has been to\nthat sense of safety and security and pray for the Muslim community that it can\nin time, be restored. A hatred of diversity simply doesn\u2019t reflect a love for\nthe one who created it. We should celebrate the differences we have because of\ntheir beauty, but firstly because they are the work of God.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We left feeling buoyed that although we\nhad all been touched by tragedy \u2013 as, indeed, unspeakable events like these are\nan attack on all of us \u2013 resolve had been strengthened, as had the sense of\ncommunity, and, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, so too was hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you had the chance to attend any vigils\nheld across the country this past weekend in remembrance of the over-50\nindividuals murdered while attending Friday prayers at two Mosques in\nChristchurch, New Zealand, these words might sound familiar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, the sentiments expressed above are\nuniversal, but the fact of the matter is they were uttered just over two years\nago when communities came together in the face of yet another tragedy: the\nQuebec City-area Mosque Shooting in January 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many communities across the country,\nregardless of faith, sprang quickly into action in the aftermath of the tragedy\nto once again offer a safe space, a healing place, for residents to come\ntogether, mourn and, perhaps most importantly, send a message of solidarity in\nthe face of extremists around the globe who now seem more emboldened than ever\nbefore to not only share their racist bile, but, sadly, act upon it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those who attended such gatherings in\n2017 and, like me, left feeling uplifted by these all-too-rare feelings of\nfellowship, I wonder who still carried this feeling as they walked into their\nnearest vigil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If there were such people, I, sadly, was\nnot one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sheer number of people now feeling\nemboldened to spout hate has been both alarming and horrific, and one doesn\u2019t\nhave to look all that far to locate the bellows working overtime to fan the\nflames of hatred. If others are not necessarily emboldened in their hated,\nothers still have become more complacent to it, having been bombarded with such\nmessages and somehow, inexplicably accepting it as some kind of new normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet \u2013 being a part of yet another\ncommunity gathering imparted that familiar sense of hope once again, with calls\nfor unity, community, and understanding, particularly the understanding and\nacceptance that an attack on one is an attack on all, imparted that familiar\nsense of hope once again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking from a personal perspective, I\nfind another source of that hope to be New Zealand itself, which seems to be a\ncountry not prepared to settle for just words; they\u2019re putting their grief into\naction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the days following the shooting, police\nin New Zealand are reporting gun owners turning up at their local stations\nlooking to hand in their semi-automatic rifles to be destroyed. In addition,\nthe New Zealand government has been a leader in stepping up to cover the costs\nof victims\u2019 funerals, regardless of their citizenship status within the island\nnation and, perhaps most importantly of all, their young Prime Minister,\nJacinda Ardern, announced her government\u2019s intention to take firm and lasting\naction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the aftermath, the Prime Minister\nannounced her cabinet had agreed \u201cin principle\u201d to tighten gun control laws in\nan effort to make her country safer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re unified [and] there are simply\ndetails to work through\u201d she said, acknowledging the complex nature of such\nlaws. \u201cThe clear lesson from history around the world is that to make our\ncommunity safer the time to act is now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think what the public are rightly\nasking is why it, and how it is that [you\u2019re] currently able to buy\nsemi-automatic military-style weapons in New Zealand \u2013 and that\u2019s the right\nquestion to ask.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is always the right question to ask, and\nshould be asked in any country where a week without a mass shooting with these\nor any other kinds of weapons are exceptions rather than the rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my opinion, we should all be cautiously\noptimistic about the action our fellow member of the Commonwealth is taking in\nthe aftermath of unspeakable tragedy. The devil will, of course, be in the\ndetails slated to be announced this week, but one can only hope it sparks a\ntrend: a trend that leads to international leaders being responsive to what needs\nto be done and making it so for the betterment of our world.<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir Their words left a lasting impression, regardless of our respective backgrounds, on each and every one of us who had come together to mourn. Whether we saw the images in a newspaper, on a news channel, or in a news feed, they left a lasting impression. The tragedies were senseless and unprovoked, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-64i","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 08:29:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}