On October 21st a young Quebec Muslim man, Martin Couture-Rouleau, deliberately ran down two Canadian soldiers with his car in a strip mall parking lot outside of Montreal . One died. The other is in hospital with grave injuries. Couture-Rouleau was chased and killed by the RCMP.
A day later, Michael Zehaf- Bibeau, another Muslin young man, shot and killed Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, who was guarding the National War Memorial, Once Zehaf-Bibeau had killed Cirillo, he hopped in a car and sped off to the Parliament buildings where he entered intent on killing more people. He was shot dead by the Sargent At Arms of the Parliament.
Both of these young men had become radicalized in the past few months and tried to obtain passports to leave Canada and join with radical Islamic terrorists in Syria.
While Canada mourns the loss of these two soldiers, the Muslim communities all across Canada are worried about backlash. And on Friday, those communities got their first taste of that backlash.
How did Canadians handle it? See over the fold.
On Friday morning, the Mosque in Cold Lake, Alberta, was painted with red graffiti that said "go home" across the front and the two front windows were smashed.
Mayor Craig Copeland expressed his disappointment:
“Just what’s spray painted on the mosque, I mean, ‘go home’… The Muslim community here is at home here in Cold Lake. It by no means represents Cold Lake. Some individuals took it upon themselves to do this.
All of Cold Lake is rallying around the mosque and the Muslim community. So many people from Cold Lake were coming up to them and apologizing and saying this by no means represents Cold Lake… There were actually several people in tears.” [source]
When members of Cold Lake community saw the vandalism, they got together and volunteered to help clean up the damage and replace the windows
Kelley Ross, who works at a neighbouring business notes how eager people were to lend a helping hand
“People were coming off the street [asking] ‘can I donate money to help fix the window?’ ‘Can I donate my services? And once we go the buckets, everyone just started coming. We didn’t even ask. We didn’t even have to ask.” [source]
Very well done, Cold Lake!!
The RCMP are currently investigating the crime of vandalismm