It's nearly been a full week since a very troubled man walked into Dawson College and shot indiscriminately into a crowd of people he never met, had never been wronged by, complete and perfect strangers. He killed one young woman, then himself. Her funeral was today. As was his.

I was tutoring there, that day (having graduated the semester prior), blessedly unable to hear or see the carnage happening three floors above my head. They told us to lock ourselves in a classroom with no windows for 25 agonzing minutes. We huddled around a radio, the only possible explanation to why our school was under siege. All we heard was the number of wounded rise and the possibility of there being more shooters still in the building, still on the loose. Finally the police told us to run, and we did. Until that day I had never experienced such fear, nor do I wish to, ever again.

You may be wondering why I'm writing this, almost a full week after the fact. After the students have taken back the school and the funerals have been held. Because this week I've done alot of thinking (and it's been a helluva lot deeper and darker than ususual). And I've come to a conclusion of sorts...

They say he was disturbed, a loner someone who had been taunted in his younger days. Another 15-year-old boy was thrown in jail, for praising him, toying with the idea of copying him. Another loner, another targets for taunts and neglect. It's not the web, it's not the videogames, it's not the music or the movies. It's our own inadequacies as people. We use these things as scapegoats to make ourselves feel better because so many of us dealt out the taunts and jeers in our youth.

We can't stop the taunts and the jeers, nor the neglect of others, but we can control how we interact with others, ourselves. So I propose something to the small percentage of you who come to my small corner of cyberspace. One kind word, one kind gesture. We truly have no way of knowing how our actions affect those around us. But they do, and do so profoundly. One of my reoccuring thoughts in this spell of unusually deep profoundness is maybe if someone, some stranger in a city of millions had done or said something kind to Kimveer Gill, I wouldn't have to write this and Anastasia DeSousa might still be alive.

This is my proposal: one kind gesture or one kind word. To someone. Anyone. Everyday. It doesn't have to be grand or expensive. It could take as long as holding the doors of an elavator for someone. Or be as difficult as picking up a dropped book in a busy corridor. Saying thank you and have a good day to the cashier at the store. Shit, I'm not asking anyone to change the world by themselves. But imagine what would happen if we all did it.


One kind word. One kind gesture. Think of the possibilties.