Cathy Cove is a 26-year resident of Goderich and active member of its environmental committee. She is a freelance writer and co-author of Not Like Any Other Sunday. Cathy Cove founded and directed Parent Network Ontario, a non-profit provincial parent organization that promoted the interests of parents in and outside Ontario’s education systems. She served on the AMDSB Special Education Advisory Committee and was invited to sit on the board’s consultations on improving Communication within the Avon-Maitland school community. She writes in Bullet News Huron about subjects that pique her interest.
This isn’t the column I had intended to end 2012 with.
I had started to write a year end review about what I experienced, how I felt, how our community celebrated as we began moving forward in 2012.
On Friday Dec. 14, as I watched horror unfold in Newtown, Conn., all thoughts about penning a column about our small community’s celebration came to a screeching halt.
Twenty-six innocent people, most of them children, lost their lives at Sandy Hook Elementary School in a most unimaginable way.
Words seem so inadequate at a time like this especially given the pain parents who lost children must be feeling. Truly, their anguish must be beyond anything most of us can imagine.
Yet words often have a way of being a sense of comfort in times of tragedy as a means of bringing communities together.
“What happened in Newtown broke our hearts here in Goderich. Everyone is feeling their pain. Especially when we realize that like us, they too take great pride in their children who are just starting out in school,” Goderich Mayor Deb Shewfelt said.
“I know that our citizens are expressing our greatest sympathies to the people of Newtown Connecticut.”
We are just now learning about the victims, their lives, their dreams, and, in the case of the teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary, their extraordinary heroics demonstrated to protect their students.
I can say with certainty that every teacher I have ever known would have done exactly the same things to protect the children in their care.
In the days and weeks ahead we will all try hard to make sense of this senseless act of violence.
Watching and listening to the interviews of victims’ families, Newtown authorities, its citizens and even the President of the United States, one common thread emerged for me.
“This was just a small town” was a phrase I heard repeated over and over and over again.
Things like this weren’t supposed to happen in small towns, and especially not to this pretty New England gem that’s the same approximate size as Stratford, Ont.
Those sentiments reminded me of our own tragedy over a year ago. How we were never supposed to experience a tornado, let alone it taking out our downtown core.
Also similar, is how Newtown has become the centre of the media universe. With time, the media crews will depart. It will be a most trying time for those left behind to endure.
Above all of the similarities, we know most about that collective small town spirit wrapping itself around Newtown like a warm blanket in support, just like we experienced.
As the funerals for the Sandy Hook elementary victims begin, that strength of spirit will be the glue that helps hold it all together for that community.
There will be time for moving forward, speculation and analysis. That time is not now.
What’s most important right now is remembering those families who at this time last week were buying last minute gifts, decorating trees and enjoying holiday concerts. They face a new reality today.
We may never truly know the reasons why this tragedy happened to this community however I hope that throughout what is going to be a long hard process that the Newtown community knows that the world is sending support and caring their way.
The time for moving forward will come.
For now, and for me, it’s time for quiet reflection and taking time to be grateful for all we have in what we enjoy in our small, strong and spirited community.
Small communities, as we all know, have the biggest hearts.
