In talking about the van attack in North York on Monday that killed 10 and injured 14 others, the word “tragedy” was coming up a lot. Certainly it applied, but it didn’t quite seem to encompass the emotion inspired by the murderousness of what happened.“Horror” was more like it. “Terror.” This was, in many ways, the heart of Toronto: near the top of our long main street; in a neighbourhood that is the fastest growing area of the city, a one-time suburban block that has become an urbanized centre, its population a mixture of affluent established senior citizens and young families, of established Canadians and new Canadians from Iran and Korea and other places; living in million-dollar detached bungalows, concrete apartment towers and glass condominiums, side by side by side. It’s close to a subway interchange but also has easy access to our highway system — the focus of the city’s most recent cars-versus-bikes debate. You don’t see it often on postcards, but it is a prototypically Torontonian place. A place that feels like home to many of us.Read more:‘Cop deserves a medal’: Toronto officer praised for cool response in tense standoff with van suspect She was ‘the best grandma anyone could ever ask for.’ More victims of van rampage identifiedWho is Alek Minassian, the man accused in the van rampage?And when the images and video began coming Monday in the aftermath of the rampage, that sense that this was our home, and these were our people — that it could have been any of us, our friends or family out there, just walking down the sidewalk — heightened their power. Shoes strewn in the road. Fire hydrants upended. Eye witnesses describing bodies flying through the air, one after another, of a stroller split in half. The dead — our dead — draped in orange tarps, out there on the sidewalk near where we visit the library, or get our passports renewed, or vi ...
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