By ERNIE NEUFELD
Enough has been said, seen, written, read and viewed about this month's national tragedy that I had decided not to write about it. Why should I? All people of Canada, native-born or immigrant, adult or child, born here, resident or expatriate, are fully acquainted with the Mayerthorpe, Alberta, area event that has held the nation in an evil spell.
What could I possibly write that has not been expressed more fittingly?
Yet regardless of what has been printed in the Review and other publications, or heard, read or viewed elsewhere, I found it impossible to sit spellbound for about two hours in front of my television set on Thursday, March 10, with tears in my eyes but a heart swelling with pride, without yielding to the need to leave a few lines to remind future students of Review archives what it felt like to be Canadian, alive and grieving, on this memorable day.
Without hesitation, I record that - in my view - it was the most heart-rending and arresting merger of national sorrow, sentiment and circumstance most of us have ever witnessed.
For the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, respected and honored by Canadians - especially those whose communities they patrol to "maintain the right" (uphold the law) - and admired worldwide, it was the costliest confrontation in the force's experience since the 1885 Battle of Duck Lake in northern Saskatchewan, where 17 Mounties fell.
What set the official ceremonies in Edmonton apart from other national days of mourning was the obvious personal grief of the individual participants. Prime Minister Paul Martin, Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson, RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli and Alberta Premier Ralph Klein, were almost as visibly moved as Lutheran Rev. Don Schliemann, father of one of the young victims, and Mountie Lee Johnston, twin brother of another. The lone Mountie who sounded the mournful "Last Post" near the end of the ceremony; an Alberta rancher who sang "Four Strong Winds" and a solo by a young First Nations woman added elements that were at once national and Canadian-prairies-oriented.
It was almost impossible for anyone to overlook the ethnic diversity of the participants, so fittingly reflecting the national character of Canada today.
People of Canada, particularly those of us who grew up in small towns where Mounties mingled with us daily, respected but not feared, will long remember the day with sadness and personal identification.
The ceremonies suitably marked closure of a national and personal tragedy. Constables Anthony Gordon, Leo Johnston, Brock Myrol and Peter Schliemann will long be remembered.
All Canada knew for whom flags nationwide bowed at half-mast; no one was sent "to know for whom the bell tolls."
Many also remembered with sadness a family that on the day of the moving memorial attended the funeral of disturbed James Roszko, who died by his own hand after cutting down the four young Mounties in cold blood.
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