5 Feet of Fury

Just another day in Toronto

“One brief example of the nonsense. Last year a child was shot dead in a Toronto school. He was immediately painted as an angel by everyone around him and that may be true — it’s odd, however, how so many young people involved in gang violence, whether victims or perpetrators, turn out to be so saintly.

“I covered the boy’s funeral live on radio. After a few speeches a young person stepped to the microphone and announced that ‘the youth’ would now be in charge of the ceremony and they would play the dead boy’s favourite song.

It was a recording from a convicted felon and used so many obscene and violent words in the first stanza that we had to hurriedly cut away, leading us to ask why there was no adult supervision of this part of the funeral and what sort of message a filthy, misogynistic, gangster-glorifying song was doing at such a time and place.

“Perhaps a total ban of handguns would have transformed the culture and climate of this event and the community around it. Then again, perhaps that’s total garbage. Let’s not disarm the law-abiding, but arrest the lawless. You’ll take my ability to think away from my cold, dead mind.”