Condolences to London's families

While trying to comfort my son, I heard myself say that London has survived fire, Hitler and the IRA.

The fear inspired across an ocean reminds me of the world my parents grew up in. My friend, who watched her house bombed during the blitzkrieg; an uncle whose ship was sunk in the North Atlantic and wrote from London, admiring the weather and the girls; friends and aquaintances escaping VietNam and sitting in a boat offshore Canada for six months; friends leaving Iran to live underneath an Italian park bench for two years; friends returning to a life in Iran; an Iraqi-Israeli colleague bringing her baby home to Israel; another who left Bulgaria remembering boar pits for political prisoners; yet another leaving Chile in the dead of night.

Yet I have known nothing but peace in my half century.


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I'm proud to qualify for a UK (EU) passport as a first generation Canadian. My family has a five hundred year history in the UK and I'm proud to be part of the Commonwealth. I don't like British food (with the exception of plum pudding); I prefer Canadian beer here and local beer there. I don't care for the class/caste system; but I do care that 8 million people were forced to take the long way home from work this evening. For the survivors harried by news cameras. Insincere speeches from Gleneagle.

Here, in my little corner of the universe, I extend a heartfelt condolence from a new understanding of loss. May you be gifted with the thought that our loved ones are merely over the horizon.