Attached is a CanWest story about a relative of mine who was trapped in Dawson College reprinted in its entirety:
"A phone call no parent wants to get
Montreal Gazette reporter Susan Semenak was at home sick when she got a phone call from her 17-year-old daughter, a student at Dawson College.
Susan Semenak, Montreal Gazette; CanWest News Service
Published: Thursday, September 14, 2006
MONTREAL - "Mommy, I'm scared. There are men with guns shooting people in my school. I'm in my class with my teacher. There are tables against the door. We've decided to stick together."
When you hear words like that from your teenage daughter, you go numb. The panic rises later. And then you need to do something, anything.
But there she was, huddled in that humanities classroom, a wrong move away from a madman who was shooting anyone he could with a rifle.
And here I was at home, sick in bed with the flu, powerless to protect her.
I didn't hear back from her for another agonizing half an hour.
In those 30 minutes, before our daughter, Katherine Mainardi, called again to say she was safe, I prayed and called her dad at work and panicked and yelled and cried and paced.
I called 9-1-1 to ask what they suggest she do. I called work to see if the news desk knew where exactly the gunmen (at the time it seemed there was more than one) were. I put on my flip-flops and headed for Dawson, ready to storm the building and race up to classroom 4H.25 and pull her to safety.
But mostly I thought about how lucky I am to be her mom, how bright and boundless and funny and beautiful she is. How much I didn't want a pissed-off nut case to determine her future. How precious and fragile is this gift that is my life and my family.
The phone's been ringing all afternoon with friends and relatives calling to see if she's OK. Her friends have been text messaging. Neighbours have been stopping in to share a sigh of relief and a quick hug.
It has not escaped my wild imagination that the scene in our house could well have been a different one. The sound of her voice in the other room, as she sings badly to Panic at the Disco cranked up loud, is the sweetest music I will ever hear.
At 17, she has been revelling in her newfound freedom at Dawson where she began studies just a few weeks ago -- coffee downtown after class, no more school uniform. But it's been scary and big and impersonal, too, going from a cozy all-girls school four blocks from home to a place with 10,000 students -- where she might wander for hours without seeing a familiar face.
So when the phone rang just before 1 p.m. Wednesday afternoon and her number showed on the caller display, I thought she was calling between classes, perhaps to say hello, to share a snippet of her day.
The crying voice on the cellphone said something else.
When she and her brother were little, it was always clear what to say, what to do to keep them safe. No playing in the street. Never talk to strangers. Wash your hands before supper.
But there she was in the midst of every parent's worst nightmare, a floor or two away from all that is twisted and depraved and terrifying about the world. My thoughts flashed to those poor parents of the Ecole Polytechnique students at those annual candle-lit memorial vigils, their lives frozen in time. Or the relatives of 9/11 victims who'd called home from the burning towers, clinging forever to those last words uttered over cellphones.
Heading up Atwater Avenue, helicopters hovering overhead, ambulances and police cars screaming up the hill, I saw teenagers crying and comforting each other, worried people in their cars on cellphones, parents hugging their children.
Then there she was, barefoot, standing at St. Jacques Street and Greene Avenue, waiting for me, her sandals lost in the race to run from the terror. I have never loved her more."
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