Close to home

Before moving to Windsor for school I lived in Toronto for several years. The last few were in a neighbourhood called "The Beaches", so named for the rather obvious reason that he neighbourhood abuts the lake, and as such there are a number of very nice parks and beaches.

It was a very pleasant place to live and I miss it a lot. The people were friendly, it had a lot of park land and there was a lot to do.

Devilboy, who was my roommate at the time, and I would often hike around they neighbourhood, exploring and drinking coffee. I used to walk a lot with Weregirl, who I had a thing for at the time. I played countless indoor and outdoor sports with the local sports league, and generally just loved the area. (But I did not love my job, hence why I am back in school and here)

The sad/scary part is that, since I left, the area has had a couple of significant near disasters...

The first happened this spring. A man who deranged man from New Brunswick (a maritime province on Canada's Atlantic coast) drove to Toronto with a car-load of guns because he planned to go on a shooting spree. Seems he thought the people back home were too nice, so he came to Toronto, more specifically the Beaches, my old neighbourhood to do his killing. He decided against it when he took a walk in the park, encountered a friendly dog, and decided that maybe my neighbours where also too nice to kill... story

The second happened this weekend. One of my two favourite sports was beach volleyball. This weekend a big tournament was scheduled and just as they were warming up, they discovered that someone had seeded the courts with blocks of wood with blades sticking out. story

Scary stories appear in the news all the time. Frankly, there are worse things in the news almost every day. But these strike a little closer to home for me and just feel a lot more personal. These sorts of things are not supposed to happen in Canada.