Rex Murphy: Ottawa Shooting – YouTube.

Rex Murphy: The saddest thing I saw today was the image of a woman, then police officers and medics desperately pumping the heart of the soldier in Ottawa as he lay dying. A long day’s drive, and I cannot tell but long it was, and enough to make all of us who were watching tremble and weep with shared pity. To kill a soldier standing unarmed ceremonial guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was a bottomless cowardice and a perversion.

If the soul of Canada has an abiding place it is here in the great hallowed War Memorial with the tomb in our capital city, a bugle call away from the chambers of our national deliberations. The murder of fine, fit, friendly and unarmed Corporal Nathan Cirillo was not a thoughtless act, instead it was soaked in callousness and contempt. The slaughter was meant to burn beyond the deed itself, to speak fundamental insult to the very ideas of honor, sacrifice, and solidarity which are our military’s credo and our country’s ideals.

The killer was a hateful brute, let us not name him, but today was not the damn killers. It produced a master counter example, the Sargent-At-Arms Mr. Kevin Vickers. Mr Vickers, the whole country is unanimous on all the matters that count, bravery, duty, selflessness, you are as good as they get. The office of Sargent-At-Arms can never have been better filled. So as we mourn the soldier Corporal Cirillo, let us honor the Sargent Mr. Vickers, they encompass between them so much of what we Canadians chose to admire and love. For the National, I’m Rex Murphy.