Author: william Page 7 of 9

I was deeply saddened and affected in a way that is difficult to put into words after learning that terrorists had recently murdered Canadian soldiers Patrice Vincent and Nathan Cirillo. To say the least, it brought tears to my eyes and, yes, sent chills up my spine.

Vincent was killed when he was run down by a vehicle Monday, October 20th. After a brief car chase, the terrorist was shot and killed by police.

Patrice Vincent

Two days later, Wednesday, October 22nd, Cirillo was murdered while standing guard at the National War Memorial outside the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, the nation’s capital. A lone radicalised gunman, who was later shot and killed by Sergeant-at-arms Kevin Vickers, had opened fire.

My heart goes out to the family and friends of these fallen heroes. I offer my deepest sympathies and condolences.

There has been a tremendous outpouring of support from Canadians (not to mention the international support) for these heroic defenders of our country. The palpable emotion, visible grief, mourning and sadness, accompanying the enormous show of support highlights what it is to be Canadian. For the most part we are a humble people. Polite, courteous, quick to apologize and well-liked internationally. Travel to any country (there are obvious exceptions like parts of the Middle East) and you’ll see what I mean.

By nature, we are passive and don’t like making a fuss. We often prefer to keep our opinions private. But if aroused, as we were last week, we are capable of becoming a unified and potently supportive force.

Although Canada is not a Christian nation by constitional law, most of us believe in a code of ethics similar to Christianity. Always striving to see both sides of an argument, Canadians prefer tolerance and compromise to dogmatism.

Canadians don’t typically brag about how great it is to be Canadian; or how great our country is; or how proud we are to be Canadian. We just go about our business, quietly appreciating who we are. We don’t often boast about our support for our citizens: athletes, movie stars, ahem, politicians, volunteer workers at home and abroad, artists and Canadian soldiers alike. Patriotism for us is often an internal emotion, separate from such symbols as flags or national anthems. I suspect many Canadians, myself included, don’t even know all the words to our national anthem.

But when something happens that moves us deeply we come out of our igloos en masse to show our true colors.

Nathan Cirillo

We stand behind our fellow citizens vehemently and illustrate loud and clear how proud we are to be Canadians and how we support our citizens and soldiers. Never has this been more evident than yesterday as thousands of wounded and mourning Canadians took to the streets and Highway of Heroes to pay tribute to fallen soldier Corporal Nathan Cirillo as his body was driven via funeral procession motorcade to Hamilton, Ontario.

Many waited for hours along streets and highways for the motorcade to arrive. Some held Canadians flags, others openly wept.

“If you’re driving down Hunt Club Road in Ottawa right now and you don’t have goosebumps, you’re not Canadian,” tweeted writer and actor Neil Bedard.

As reported by The Ottawa Citizen, Steve Kirwan, along with his wife and two youg daughters, said, “This was a tragic event. Everybody should be paying their respects. The city should just be jam-packed full of stopped cars right now.”

“I’m like most Canadians in that I’m truly upset to think that someone living in our country would do what he did to that soldier,” said Fred Hobbs, a Second-World War veteran. “I think of that young man and other men like him who come into the services and wear the uniform. We are all so indebted to them.”

That comment brings to mind other comments I’ve read lately.  Some people have tweeted and posted on Facebook that they don’t understand why they are so deeply upset by these recent tragic events.

I have a theory. Maybe sometimes we take it for granted what it is to be Canadian, perhaps downplay or often don’t verbalize our love for Canada and our patriotism. But when something like this happens, the cap bursts off the bottled up emotions and we realize how deeply patriotic we really are. At least, that’s how I’ve processed my own emotions in the wake of the tragic events of late.

The two recent Canadian deaths hit me so hard because sometimes I take it for granted what it is to be Canadian and don’t really think about the brave people who are charged with defending our personal liberties and freedoms. I don’t think about how proud I am to be Canadian or how quick I would help fellow Canadians out of a jamb. During a recent trip to the Dominican Republic, I found myself in a few situations where Canadians were in trouble. Without thinking about the repercussions, I came to their aid. In one situation, I met a young female Canadian whose experience in the Dominican Republic was wearing thin and becoming dangerous. She had a nasty skin rash, had been robbed of money and her cell phone, and needed money for a plane ticket home. My offer to loan her money brought tears of joy to her eyes.  She was quick to say she would pay me back.

We exchanged contact details, I loaned her six hundred dollars, and she flew home and out of danger. It’s been over six months and I’ve never heard a word from her since. But, I’m not focused on losing six hundred dollars. No.

Nathan Cirillo’s dog

The biggest gift for me was seeing her relieved expression and tears of joy, feeling her warm embrace as she hugged me tightly and thanked me profusely. She seemed like a nice person and for all I know she’s too embarrassed to contact me because she doesn’t have the money to repay me. I was just happy to be in a position to help a fellow Canadian return home safely. I don’t care about the money. Call me crazy, but I would do it all over again.

It’s what we do.

It’s who we are.

Now, let’s take a few moments of silence to express our condolences, pay our respects and remember fallen heroes Patrice Vincent and Nathan Cirillo. They made the ultimate sacrifice, their lives, to help and protect Canadians.

Dominican Republic–A gunfight at La Canita bar in Puerto Plata last Saturday resulted in three dead and five seriously injured, according to local newspaper Diario.

As a result of the shoot-out, 15 persons have been detained for questioning and the bar, rumored to be one of the biggest drug distribution points in town, has been closed. Now this might be just another news story. But La Canita was one of my favorite haunts during my travels to the DR. I’ve enjoyed many good times with friends there. I was informed of this incident by a friend living in the DR who had been at the bar the night before the fatal gunfight. He was obviously grateful he was there Friday and not Saturday.

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Walls. What do you think of when you hear that word? Wood walls, plaster walls, brick walls? What about emotional walls, the often deleterious walls that prevent us from moving forward in life and living in the present instead of dwelling on the past.

People put up emotional walls for many different reasons. Maybe they got abused during childhood and are unwilling to trust people, lack the self-confidence to show their inner selves or have perhaps been burned in a relationship.

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What if the government made it mandatory for you to have a microchip implanted in your brain, telling you it was for your security, for your safety? Would you believe it? Would you take it? 
What if you learned world powers were setting up sophisticated spy cameras everywhere to watch and record your every move 24/7? Would you believe it? Would you run and hide? Would you become a subversive and fight back? 

What if you learned soldiers and law-enforcement officers had become super-soldiers, genetically modified trans-humans capable of out-running Usain Bolt, out-lifting Olympic weightlifters, re-growing limbs, and even communicating telepathically through microchips installed in their heads? Would you believe it? Would you acquiesce to the new world order? Would you revolt? 

In a chillingly real examination of these questions, post-apocalyptic disaster survivors Nathan King and Velvet Jones escape government clutches, returning to war-ravaged Prince Edward Island only to discover their problems are just beginning. Not only are they being hunted by savage, opportunistic tribes struggling for survival, giant insects created by the new world order are also hunting for blood. 

If that isn’t enough, a government desperate to cover up its megalomaniac trail of death and destruction declares them a subversive enemy of the nation and launches a search and destroy mission. 

Battling multiple enemies, Nathan and Velvet soon learn their only hope for survival might be intangible: a portal inadvertently created by the genetic modification drug that seems to take them into another world, another dimension. 

In gritty and shocking fashion, Assaulted Souls III illustrates just how close we might actually be to a totalitarian regime ruled by ruthless and power-hungry leaders and thugs. Buy Now

Visit us on Social Media and Share your review of Assaulted Souls using the hashtag #AssaultedSoul

Post-apocalyptic fiction fan Kevin O’Neill recently intercepted my break-neck production schedule and interviewed me on Assaulted Souls, genetic modification and the apocalypse. Without any further adieu, here is the abridged interview:

O’Neill: In your newly released Assaulted Souls trilogy, you talk a lot of doom and gloom. In Assaulted Souls III, post-apocalyptic survivors narrowly escape government clutches, returning to war-ravaged Prince Edward Island only to discover their problems are just beginning.

Assaulted Souls

Not only are they being hunted by savage, opportunistic tribes struggling for survival, giant insects created by the new world order are also hunting for blood. If that isn’t enough, a government desperate to cover up its megalomaniac trail of death and destruction declares them a subversive enemy of the nation and launches a search-and-destroy mission. Battling multiple enemies, they soon learn their only hope for survival might be intangible; a portal inadvertently created by the genetic modification drug that seems to take them into another world, another dimension. Is that how you view escape from an apocalypse? Going to another dimension?

Blackwell: I don’t know. As I was writing the trilogy, this idea of another dimension just sort of popped up, and seemed to fit into the story, adding perhaps a spiritual dimension to it. I think it serves to drive home the point that, without some spirituality, trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland could potentially be much more terrifying. Oftentimes with spirituality comes hope.

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I’ll be the first person to admit that social media has many benefits. It’s great for promotion, has the ability to catapult you to financial success overnight if used properly, and is an excellent way to stay connected with friends, family and loved ones.

But therein lies the paradox. Social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Whatsapp, to name a few, has not only thrived but exploded in popularity by exploiting the human need to connect with others. It preys on our propensity to be admired and loved, our desire to measure our self-worth by how many likes we get with our selfies (for those of you who don’t know, it means self-taken photos).

Like me please.

I recently had a conversation with a computer repair technician, and you wouldn’t believe some of the stories he told me about social media addiction. Maybe you would. He said one customer brought a computer into his shop to have all her photos backed up on a flash drive, claiming it wouldn’t be a very large job as there were only about 600-odd photos. What the technician found was over 100,000 photos, most of them of the woman’s teenage daughter. Apparently the teen spends many hours at the computer (and on social media), and every time she strikes a different pose (which must be fairly often) she snaps another picture, trying to capture that perfect angle, her best side maybe. Who knows how many of these photos made it onto her Facebook Wall of self-aggrandizement, looking for likes, a sense of self-worth and even a sense of identity from the virtual mirror of social judgment.

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As I write these words, intense winds batter my house and shake the surrounding tree-line violently.

It’s easy to downplay Mother Nature’s wrath. “We could use the rain,” I said to a gas station cashier the other day while discussing the expected arrival of Hurricane Arthur. “I really don’t think it’ll be that bad.” I said this even after watching the devastation it caused in North Carolina, not to mention the other states; even after reading news reports Arthur had caused flash flooding, downed trees and massive power outages in neighboring provinces New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

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There are millions of authors out there trying to get their voices heard, their visions read. Not all of them will make it. Some will get discouraged by the lack of attention and quit writing altogether. Still others will succumb to family and financial pressures and wave the white flag of surrender. And that’s an easy thing to do. Just quit, pack it in, say no more, never look back.

But is it what you want?

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If you don’t hear from me for a while, please don’t think for a second my creativity has gone dormant. Or, I’ve abandoned you. No. The little wheels in the little mind are always turning, always searching for new story ideas, always reading, writing, trying to refine the craft and become a better writer.

Admittedly, I’ve had a lot of other projects to detract from writing lately. The weather here on Prince Edward Island has been beautiful over the summer. Sometimes I find it hard to keep myself indoors, at the keyboard, creating when the weather is so nice outside. After all, I have a beautiful forested, waterfront acreage to explore.

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