The crisp autumn air that signals falling leaves brings with it a rush of memories for Martin Magnan.
“It gives me a chill. I’m not afraid, but it’s not comfortable,” Magnan said in French in an interview with Radio-Canada. “The first time it gets cold with the wind, it’s a clear reminder.”
Magnan, then a press secretary with Veterans Affairs, was passing the National War Memorial on the morning of Oct. 22, 2014, when he heard gunshots. He rushed to the side of a fallen Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, who’d been mortally wounded as he stood sentry.
“In my head, all I heard was: React, let’s go!” Magnan recalled.
He remembers holding Cirillo’s hand and being instructed to raise the soldier’s legs as he and other bystanders struggled to resuscitate him.
“The moments got longer and time folded on itself,” said Magnan, who also recalled feeling an intense cold in that moment.
It would take years for him to understand the full impact that the events of that morning had on him.
“I felt lost for a long time. I was experiencing the after-effects without even realizing it,” he said. “I wouldn’t sleep for long periods. I would walk for the entire night. One morning, I woke up in a park.
“I no longer had the strength or the means to manage my personal life.”
‘We’re all on a healing journey’
In interviews in the years following the attack, Magnan said he speaks to Cirillo whenever he passes by the monument, and regularly visits the site on his walk to work or during lunch.
“I feel good here. It’s like being in my backyard,” he said of the towering monument and tree-ringed plaza in the heart of Ottawa’s downtown.
Magnan said he still has some healing to do.
“I hope that moment made me a better person now. I’m much more understanding that everyone has their experiences and everyone lives with their grief,” he said. “We’re all on a healing journey to be better people and move past our problems.”
A photo of Magnan and the other bystanders who rushed to Cirillo’s side sits on Margaret Lerhe’s desk in her Ottawa home, a reminder of a “very significant day” in her life.
Ten years ago, the former nurse was passing by the National War Memorial when shots rang out.
“I just remember myself standing on the steps asking myself, am I ready to help?” she recalled.
Others were asking themselves the same question. “Everybody came literally from a different direction,” Lerhe said.
The group of strangers quickly formed a team, each playing their vital part as though working in an intensive care unit, Lerhe said. Their focus was on Cirillo, not on whether the gunman might return.
“This was extraordinary how everybody came together in order to help Cpl. Cirillo. It’s as though we worked together many times before,” she said.
‘I told him he was loved’
Lerhe’s nurse training helped keep her focused on the medical task at hand, but she recalls hearing another bystander, lawyer Barbara Winters, tell Cirillo he was loved as she held his hand.
The last thing Cpl. Nathan Cirillo likely heard before he died from a gunshot wound on Parliament Hill on Oct. 22, 2014, was the voice of Barbara Winters telling him he was good, brave and loved. Winters told As It Happens host Carol Off about his final moments. (Animation by Ben Shannon)
“I told him he was loved, and that he was brave, and that he was a good man,” Winters told CBC News shortly after the shooting.
“Your military family loves you,” Winters told Cirillo. “Look at these people, we’re all here helping you. We’re all trying to do what we can for you. We all love you.”
Lerhe also remembers the words of the soldier’s mother Kathy Cirillo to her later that day.
“[She said], ‘I don’t think you realize how your life is going to change because of this moment,'” Lerhe recalled.
“I couldn’t imagine how it was going to change at that point. I couldn’t imagine how she could find the energy or the compassion to focus on me when her life had been turned upside down. I was in awe of her.”
Purpose and action
Lerhe said the Cirillo family’s unimaginable grief, and the death of a close friend’s son from cancer a short time later, inspired her to focus on purpose and action in her life.
“Find meaning, do those things that you can to help others,” she said. “Life … can be cut short by unforeseen circumstances, tragically.”
The January after the shooting, Lerhe finally took the retirement she had long contemplated and volunteered with Médecins Sans Frontières. She has now served with the charity in more than a dozen countries, including conflict zones.
On the 10th anniversary of the shooting, she’d like people to reflect on how they can help others, like that group of strangers that rushed to the aid of a fallen soldier.
“Everybody stepped forward,” she said. “That’s my hope, is that the next time that someone is down or needs help, that a bystander tries and helps out in any way they can. That’s humanity.”
Paramedic chief rushed to scene
Anthony Di Monte was Ottawa’s chief paramedic and one of the first emergency responders to arrive at the National War Memorial that morning. He was leaving a meeting at city hall when he heard a call over the radio about someone without vital signs.
When he arrived at the war memorial, bystanders were already performing CPR.
“They were doing great work to help someone,” he said. “I’ve often seen Canadians, whenever somebody is in distress, there’s always somebody in the crowd that comes and help.”
As a trained first responder, Di Monte was also aware of the lingering danger. No one was sure where the shooter was.
“I knew that now we were not necessarily in a safe zone, so that was my next priority, to ensure that these citizens were in safety. But quite quickly Ottawa police and other officers arrived and secured the scene,” he said.
Di Monte said he grappled with how someone serving their country could be targeted in the heart of its capital, and at such a sacred place.
“I find it so tragic for both the family and his friends, how difficult that must be,” he said. “I’m sure every day they get up they must remember him, but certainly on the 10th anniversary.”