Time Immortal

Canadians can be very complacent, especially where the threat of force is concerned. Perhaps as a function of our government-dependent, socialism-addled attitudes which disavow most notions of personal responsibility or obligation to the well-being of others, we tend not to want to risk our necks when an imminent danger to ourselves, or to others, emerges. When the man with the gun shows up, we tend to just do as he says — indeed, we’ve been taught to just do as he says — rather than make a stand against the would-be bully.

This was certainly true in Montreal all those years ago; fourteen women died there not because of the latent misogyny of society, but because of the cowardice and complacency programmed into the men who meekly obeyed the gunman’s order to leave their female classmates behind in those classrooms. And it might have ended up being true in Regina, Saskatchewan’s Luther College High School, but for the actions of school principal Mark Anderson. Because when a former student showed up with a firearm (which turned out to be an air-driven pellet gun) and demanded, at a school rally, that a list of grievances be read, the principal did what was right: he found a way to get close and wrestled the gunman to the floor.

A lot of modern folks might click their tongues at Mr. Anderson’s attitude: as the Shaidle notes, “those of us who praise such men [as Mark Anderson] are publicly condemned by lesser “males” who tremble at the implication that they should feel obliged do likewise.” And yet, at the end of the day, that was his obligation. As the principal, he was charged with the safety of the young students attending the school; their lives were in his care. And he acted in the only way that a moral man could have acted when faced with a threat to that which he is charged with keeping safe — he stood up to fight.

Would that his story were not newsworthy! Would that Canadian men and women could always, and readily, display this sort of courage, so that the truly surprising stories in the news were not stories of normal courage, but stories of shocking cowardice rightly condemned by all good people.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!