Terrorism in Ottawa

Just before 10 am today, a man with a hunting rifle walked calmly up to a soldier on duty at the national war memorial in Ottawa and shot him in the chest from a couple of meters away. The soldier was mortally wounded and died shortly afterwards in the trauma unit at the Ottawa Civic Hospital.

The shooter moved to the Centre Block of Parliament about 150 meters away, got in the front entrance below the Peace Tower.  There was an exchange of gunfire with many armed guards, and the shooter died on the spot. As so often happens in such episodes, the actions of law enforcement authorities left no possibility of answering several important questions. It is unfortunate that the shooter is not available for interrogation.  Continuous radio and TV coverage from 10 am to mid afternoon gave me an impression of hasty and rather thoughtless over-reaction and irrational responses to rumors and misinformation. Public buildings, government offices and the large shopping mall a few hundred meters away – and the University of Ottawa about 300-400 meters away – went into lock-down while the rumors swirled. So far as it’s possible to say at this stage, panicky stories of other shooters in the shopping mall, snipers on rooftops, and an assault on the Israeli embassy, are all groundless. Two other victims of gunshots taken to the Civic Hospital today were probably “caught in the crossfire” of the assassination at the national war memorial or perhaps were shot during the barrage of gunfire that killed the original shooter after he got through the front door of the Centre Block.  Law enforcement officials may tell us in due course exactly what happened. At this early stage there seems to be no evidence of a carefully planned attack by a well-trained team like the one that assaulted the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai a few years ago. My preliminary guess is that the attack was carried out by a solitary shooter, most likely one of the young Jihadis who has been seduced by the messages of ISIS.  

No doubt there will be much tightening of existing security measures. So far, among the first to be announced is one that sends a decidedly mixed message: members of Canadian armed forces are ordered NOT to wear uniforms when leaving their bases off duty; at such times they must wear civilian clothing.

One observation: I’m rather surprised that it’s taken so long for a terrorist episode to occur in Ottawa. About 30 years ago, a Turkish diplomat was shot by an Armenian nationalist not far from where we lived at the time, but that was a manifestation of the chronic animosity between Turks and Armenians. There have long been reasons for Islamic extremists to dislike actions by our current government. Ottawa offers them many tempting and easy targets to attack. Security will surely be tightened and getting about in the city centre will probably become cumbersome and difficult. I fear that the grand boulevard of Wellington Street in front of Parliament Hill might become hard to navigate. Fortunately I don’t have many reasons to go up to the Hill these days. I feel much empathy for all those who do.

Autumn 2014

The earth revolves on its axis and its axis tilts, relentlessly marking the passage of time; and the seasons change in sequence with these revolutions and tilts. It's the passage of time that I notice most. This year I decided to mark its passage with daily photos from my balcony.  Here's a set of daily photos, beginning Oct 10 and continuing through what would have been Wendy's 89th birthday, Oct 14

October 10 2014 looking west

October 11 looking west

October 12 looking west

October 12, zooming on the maple
near First Avenue school

Carpet of golden leaves below maple beside Rideau Canal (looking east from my balcony)
October 13

October 14

October 14

October 15

October 16

October 17










At this point I'm going to quit (always try to quit when you're ahead; it's a good motto). From now on the colours will blow away rather quickly. A few years ago when I carried out a similar exercise I recall wondering whether I'd be here to do it again the following year. Well, I was. Weighing up the pros and cons, I hope I'll still be here next year, and the year after when I'll be 90. Beyond then, I'll reserve judgement.      

Ebola

Ebola was one of the 30-odd "new and emerging" diseases that I mentioned in the 2nd edition of my book, Public Health and Human Ecology (1996). I didn't mention it in the first edition (1986). It was identified in 1976 but little was known about it in 1985 when the first edition went into production. It is a viral hemorrhagic fever that until this latest epidemic, had been confined to small, remote rural village settings, and therefore all previous outbreaks had been localized and limited to a few dozen cases. This epidemic is different in several ways. Most important, it has occurred in densely settled urban centres, Monrovia, Liberia and Freetown, Sierra Leone. Numbers affected have inevitably been much larger, and the epidemic spread has been explosive. Inadequate public health infrastructure and local beliefs and burial customs have greatly enhanced the risk of spread.  The natural hosts of the pathogen, its ecology and its possible modes of spread are not yet fully understood beyond the obvious empirical observation that it is highly infectious and spread in body fluids by direct person to person contact. Other possible modes of transmission - by contaminated bedding and clothing, cooking utensils, domestic pests such as rats or household pets, passive transmission by flies and other insects, water-borne and food-borne spread - have been investigated but it isn't clear to me that these have all been absolutely ruled out. Several cases have been evacuated from West Africa to the USA and to Spain, which immediately struck me as unwise. My misgivings have been reinforced by the occurrence of a case transmitted in Spain to an attending hospital nurse. 

The causative organism is a filovirus. This has an unusual structure for a virus. its natural hosts are feral primates and possibly bats that can transmit it to rodents but it isn't known whether other mammals can harbour the virus without falling ill. Taking no chances, the Spanish public health authorities plan to destroy the pet dog belonging to one of the cases they have identified. As of early October 2014 there have been over 7000 cases since this epidemic began in March 2014, with a mortality rate over 50%. By any criteria this is an extremely dangerous epidemic.  At the time I'm writing this, early October 2014, I believe there is a real risk that this epidemic could become a global pandemic. 

Memento Mori

Lately I've commemorated several deaths in posts on this blog, among them some very good friends and colleagues, all but one older than I. Yesterday's newspaper carried the obituary of yet another, a friend and former neighbour in the condo where I live. He was born earlier in the same year as I, in 1926, so he was just a few months older than I. 

Today's emails included one with the very sad news of another death, this time a young woman, a writer, to whom I was at first an email mentor for a year or so, then Wendy and I met her and her husband, whom I already knew, stayed with them for a few days during one of our annual visits to Australia in the mid 1990s. Her husband was still a rural GP in those days, poised for the leap he soon made into academia. He followed the same path I'd trod, from scholarly general practice into epidemiology and public health. I'm pleased and proud to have been his role model. His wife and I became close internet friends as so many of us were inclined to do in the early days of email when we became 'electronically intimate.' I described her as a 'young' woman and by today's standards she was young, in her 50s I suppose. She wrote well, and my editorial suggestions probably helped to improve her collection of connected short stories which were published by an offshoot of the BMA. I understand they sold quite well, so that was a success for both of us. 

I've heard others say, and now I say it myself, that you know you are old when the deaths reported in the press and in professional journals are of people younger than yourself. That's surely happening increasingly often to me.