TV viewers provide telltale signs of tragedy

I caught the news of the tragedy at Montreal's Dawson College yesterday at a convenience store on Queen Street where half a dozen customers had surrounded and were glued to one of the store's two television sets. Between September 11, last year's London Bombings, the most recent war in the Middle East and others, this scene of strangers staring together in awe at live, unfolding coverage of horrific events in stores and on street corners has become eerily familiar; just by the looks on my fellow customers' faces and the way they stopped dead in their tracks to watch the news unfold, I knew instantly I was about to learn of another terrorist attack, genocide or fatal shooting.

It's an interesting phenomenon borne of - in my view - two main factors. One is certainly - between cell phone cameras and embedded reporting - the news media's ability to deliver details of (all too often) tragic events in almost real time. Spend 5 minutes watching something like Dawson unfold in a convenience store, and you're as up to speed on the tragedy as the people involved - be they victims, soldiers or witnesses.

The other, more telling contributor appears to be (and I hate to use the expression) the "post 9/11" factor. We've all experienced this factor in terms of day to day lifestyle inconveniences - taking our shoes off during airport security screenings, surrenduring our pocket knife keychains going into a baseball game or simply increased police presence at public events - but what's just as profound is how we (North Americans) react to tragedies like Dawson.

In particular, the fact that terrorist attacks and other violent events in recent years are hitting closer and closer to home (not, as Bill Mayer puts it, in a country you can't find on a map) has created a need to stay on top of developing news stories around the clock. For what the Taliban and Al Queda have taught us in recent years is that, no matter in what Baltic or Middle Eastern state an attack or conflict might be right now, the next one could down the block.

What we've also done is sought comfort in in numbers as we watch tragedies unfold. Watching horrible events on CNN or CBC with our families, friends, co-workers or even strangers in a convenience store has become a more common occurence. It's become that telltale sign I mentioned earlier as we wait to see if the latest tragedy will be the Kennedy assassination of our generation, where decades from now we'll be able to recount exactly where we were and with whom.

Why this change in behaviour? There are probably a hundred explanations, equally valid. My simple answer is that we're cutting our teeth on living in a vulnerable world. For 150 years(Pearl Harbour aside) North Americans have had the luxury of living in a world that's been insulated from the bloodbaths and destruction that have rocked other civilizations throughout history. But as anyone who has lived in Northern Ireland, Romania or Israel can attest, constant vulnerability appears to be an unfortunate reality in any longstanding nation. The simple truth may be that North America is just growing up.