Aftermath

Waves of sorrow: Search ends for 16 missing in chopper crash.

I don't know how much media play this story has been getting in the States (where most of my neighbors live), but it has been understandably dominating the news up here since yesterday. And it's had me reflecting.

Canadians are very regionalist people. There are the most basic divisions, North, West, East, Central. Within those, you find the West Coast, the Upper Canadians (Ontarians), the Quebecois, the Easterners, the Northerners. Even within those you find further divisions. Out of all of the groups of Canadians, you would be hardpressed to find a set more tightly bound or well-known than the Newfoundlanders.

I think that once you leave Newfoundland, the closest thing (not just geographically speaking) would be the Maritimes, the rest of Atlantic Canada. Of all the people in the country, we are probably the most similar. Atlantic Canadians walk some of the most beautiful land in the world, and we share a common history. The similarity of our land, our people and our past combine to ensure that we share other things as well, specifically a history of tragic losses at sea. I believe it is this common history that causes us to feel the enormous empathy that we do when such things happen. Our lives, past, present and future, are similar and intertwined in both great and terrible ways.

I don't know why this is affecting me so much, but if I had to guess, I would say it's probably because it hits so close to home. Newfoundlanders and Maritimers, we are not so dissimilar. It could so easily have happened here; it could be seventeen Nova Scotians being mourned tonight. I know that people are lost at sea all the time, and I realize that in the grand scheme of things, seventeen people is probably not that many. But seventeen families have been left with empty arms, seventeen futures abruptly silenced, and an unimaginable number of people have been left to grieve. Sixteen families may never have bodies to bury. And in a community as tightly bound as Newfoundland, seventeen is a lot. It would be hard, I suspect, to walk through Newfoundland tonight and find someone who was not connected in some direct or indirect way to one of the men or women killed.

Atlantic Canadians are known for being kind, goodhearted people, good at pulling together to take care of both our own and people from "away". And we are strong and resilient. I have no doubt that this will be true in the days and weeks to come in Newfoundland, but it does not change the magnitude of the sadness at what has happened. I have never lived anywhere else, so I don't have much of a frame of reference, but I would compare the reactions here to those of America and, indeed, the world, in the days and weeks following 9/11. We heard it repeated over and over again: We are all Americans today. And I believe that, truly, at least in Atlantic Canada, we are all Newfies tonight. We are so sorry for your loss.