The enormity of the horrendous slaughter perpetrated over the weekend in Nova Scotia defies measure. Based on the latest reports, 22 utterly innocent people who were going about their normal, everyday affairs were callously and savagely executed. It was the worst mass murder in Canadian history and coming amidst the backdrop of COVID-19, it seems all the more heartbreaking.

So many dead, and so many more families, friends and neighbours left to bear the sharpest possible cuts of grief and loss, and all this due to the deranged, cowardly and murderous butchery of a single killer. In the most tranquil times, this would scream at the heart. But these are not the most tranquil of times. The slaughter (there is no other word for what happened) takes on an even sharper edge, one of cruelty due to the fact that it was perpetrated in a time of general anxiety and threat, when the whole country is weary from the daily mortality bulletins of the pandemic.