When I read something stupid online, I have to comment on it.
I don't know, maybe that's just the person I've become over the years, particularly as a journalist who does his best to remain neutral on many topics and attempts to correct others when there appears to be a mistake.
A couple of weeks ago, I was browsing social media like 99.7% of us addicted humans do when I came across a statement made by someone on what used to be called Twitter.
It tied into two things. One, the terrifying reality of mass shooting incidents in the United States, and two, that country's never-ending battle of Republicans vs Democrats.
Here's what was said, from the username 'Jane of the North' on what used to be called Twitter (X, now):
"Canadian here.
We don't have prayer in schools, or the Ten Commandments, or God. We also don't have dead kids.
No Canadian child has ever died in a mass shooting at an elementary school. We have guns. What we don't have is Republicans.
American has to get rid of Republicans."
Yes, I'm aware of the grammatical error right at the end there, but it was 'Jane's' job to correct her mistake, not mine.
Besides, if you ask me, that wasn't anywhere near the biggest mistake that this statement made in the first place.
Let me break apart this statement in pieces and show you what I'm talking about here. She says that children haven't died in Canada due to any ELEMENTARY school shooting. I can't dispute that, she's correct in that instance because there haven't been any reported elementary school shootings in our country.
But allow me to remind people of the reality behind school massacres that have taken place in our fine country.
At Brampton Centennial Secondary School in Brampton, Ontario in May of 1975, Michael Slobodian, a 16-year-old student at the school, had been cutting classes. His teacher, Margaret Wright, had called his parents to inform them of the issue. Michael's mother confronted her son about this during a mid-morning break, when Slobodian had gone home. Michael then wrote a note to his family, saying that "I am going to eliminate certain people from this world. Those people are: Mrs. Wright, Mr. Bronson and any other sucker who gets in my way. I am then going to kill myself so as not to be imprisoned."
Michael then returned to school with two rifles in a guitar case. He began firing the weapons at three boys in a washroom, killing student John Slinger and wounding the other two. Entering the hallway, Michael continued his rampage, wounding several other students. He continued on into his school's art classroom, where he killed teacher Wright and wounded two more fellow students. After returning to the hallway, Michael then turned the gun on himself. The end result saw three people dead, including the shooter, and 13 others hurt in the chaos.
There is a deep ocean of other information regarding school shootings here in Canada if one was to go looking. St. Pius X High School, W.R. Myers High School, the University of Alberta, the shootings in La Loche. It's all there if you want to do the research yourself.
Yes, Jane. It was a good save on your part to retain your argument by adding the word 'elementary' to what you had to say. But the truth is that children HAVE died in school shootings; they just happened to be attending a secondary or high school. Young adults with the rest of their lives looking right at them have also been killed in college and university shootings, and as seen just above, so have teachers who had intended on going to work on those days and teaching young minds.
Yes sir, the inclusion of the word 'elementary' is absolutely crucial here, because otherwise, well, the base argument has about as much strength as a bowl of room-temperature Jello.
And even when we venture outside of the school hallways and classrooms, Canada hardly has a squeaky-clean past when it comes to gun violence in general. Mass shootings and shooting spree incidents date back to the first reported incident in Altona, Manitoba in October of 1902, which saw three wind up dead and five others injured.
So, yes. There have been school shootings in Canada. People from teenage children to young adults and educators have died from those shootings. And in society in general, there have been a long list of violent shootings that have left too many Canadians dead.
Here's the thing that irks me about standing on some online soapbox and trying to look holier than thou.
Being horrifically blind and ignorant in order to point your un-American finger at one of the US's political parties is a level of grand-standing that's almost comical. At the end of the day, the almost funny thing is that she made sure to say 'elementary', as if that truly helps make her point.
"Okay, let's be careful here. I gotta make sure to say 'elementary' school, otherwise my argument falls apart like a house of cards!"
The other sad reality is one that we here in Saskatchewan are all too familiar with. When we venture outside of these horrible acts of murder dotting our Canadian landscape, how about the fact that crime in general here at home is so bad, even in a modestly sized city like North Battleford, that CTV decides to spotlight that fact with an episode of W5?
No, Canada isn't America, so we can at least say that we don't have a higher number of school shooting incidents.
But the truth is that in some parts of our country, things are already bad enough with the crimes that ARE happening. For crying out loud, we just had a 14-year-old light a fellow student on fire in Saskatoon in the last few weeks.
Avoiding reality in order to make some narrow-ended point doesn't make you right. It just makes you ignorant and, in my book, an asshole.
For this week, that's been the Ruttle Report.
