Editorial — Evil always brings forth good

EDITORIAL — Cowardice foreshadows heroism. Evil brings forth good.

The cowardice — and it was that, regardless of whatever illness might have preceded it — of Michael Zehaf-Bibeau in Ottawa on Wednesday was terminated by the heroism of House of Commons sergeant-at-arms Kevin Vickers.

His evil was a mirror opposite to the humanity of those who raced to the aid of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, shot down by Zehaf-Bibeau. Media told their story on Thursday. None told it better than one of the Samaritans herself, lawyer Barbara Winters. Her words are gut-wrenching in print, inspiring in audio.

No one who heard her on CBC’s As It Happens during Thursday’s drive-home time could be unaffected. With complete humility and considerable courage, she told of how she was near the War Memorial when she heard shots and ran towards them, then how she and others tried to save the life of Nathan Cirillo.

She was part of a team of people who came together in an instant to give emergency medical assistance until paramedics arrived, but it is Winter’s words to the dying man that are so heart-breaking yet re-assuring. She comforted him in his last moments in a way that few could have found a way to express.

“Your family loves you,” she told him. “Your parents are so proud of you. Your military family loves you. All the people here, we’re working so hard for you. Everybody loves you.”

Winters says she kept repeating it during the agonizing minutes she and others tried to stop the bleeding, keep him breathing, and waited for the paramedics. How terrible those few minutes must have been.

Winters wept as she told of it. And the rest of us weep to listen. We weep out of sadness, out of admiration, and out of relief that for acts of evil such as that perpetrated by Zehaf-Bibeau there is invariably an act of astounding good.