JC Bouchard The mall in Elliot Lake collapsed & everyone you know is either dead or dying & youll

never see them again

The first time I heard about it was after I had returned from out of town with a friend of mine, Sunday, 11:32am, & we drove as close as we could to where it happened, but we couldnt see much even though we wanted to / There was yellow police tape around the whole parameter & police cruisers were on stand by at the entrances, but as we strolled up Ontario Avenue beside the place to try & get a better look, we could see flowers & candles & jars for donations set up next to the telephone poles & it was then I knew some were dead but didnt know how many Naturally, the only people allowed inside the area were the rescue team, medical personal, city officials, engineers, firefighters, police officers, equipment operators, the truck drivers & all the qualified volunteers helping anyone they could When my friend & I got back to our houses we watched the news & saw some video1 that showed a portion of the mall roof about 40 x 80 ft. that collapsed right through, down to 2 floors, & all was dust & crushed concrete & debris littering a large crater right where the lottery booths & magazine stands & a few coolers of soda used to be, & in the specific video we saw, there were all the people (specifically a woman in blue jean shorts & a pink tank top, shoulder-length blond hair, only being able to see the back of her) standing around the edge of the giant hole looking around, probably stunned, perhaps mortified, if even slightly, & I bet if all those people werent so shocked or disoriented by the sudden accident, or if they listened closely, they could hear the muffled yells & cries & pleas for help from all those people (or even just a single person) dying or almost dead, & thats the first thought that came to mind when the video streamed before the screen

* There were 3 of 4 rumors going round & it didnt take too long to hear about them / 30 wounded, 4 dead / 2 trapped, 1 dead / 20 wounded, 4 missing, 0 dead 1 Im sure it was the same video that everyone had already seen, the only one available, the one
taken immediately after it happened by someone in the food court & in the background you could faintly hear his voice, low & sparse, as people around stood in the fainting dust peering inside the newly formed precipice, a hole into oblivion that might as well had been hell / The video was the only thing people had to see the destruction with / Theres a sense of beauty in decay: where it all
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Nobody really knew what was happening, exactly, & the news crews didnt really know what was happening & the people who knew the least were those under the rocks & rusted beams of steel & the weight of their memories slowly dissolving in the ether of passing time Still the rumors kept coming, seemingly all at once The first I heard about them was from a concerned friend who lives about 7 hours away who heard it on the news & texted me shortly after while I was in a restaurant, saying, simply, the mall of the roof collapsed2 & how he couldnt believe it & how sad it was / Then, moments after that, another concerned friend called & said that it was a tragedy, & my brother & my sister & other relatives called my grandparents who often shopped there, & then it started all over social media websites (some of which I am a member) where status updates & posts gave best wishes to all the families & showed local news stories & video(s), even from those who had moved away from here long ago This was a day after it happened The stories kept coming & everyone had their own expert opinion on what had happened & what to do, & why was this & why was that, but they really didnt know much except that if there actually were people trapped like dogs under all that had fallen on them, they should be saved immediately & without question, while others still argued with each other that it must not have been safe enough, that the workers would do anything they could, everyone is trying their best & we must be patient3 With this entire happening, I began to wonder if death is as much a virtue as patience4

* The next day, Tuesday, June 26, the rescue workers were ordered to stop for fear of their safety, weary & apprehensive, frightened that the remaining structure was in high risk of buckling in on them, & in order to ensure that not one more soul became trapped or dead 2 Which really wasnt a rumor because it was true 3 The rescue team was ordered to stop work 4 Last night I had a dream that a stranger in the dark stabbed me in the gut with a fish fillet knife
& as the stranger dug in deep, then pulled up the knife through my abdomen, then twisted in slightly to the right, he looked at me through my eyes & told me I had too much passion & that I deserved to die, then the stranger quickly pulled the knife out & I fell to me knees as he disappeared back into the dark & I slowly died in the dirt & it was the greatest freedom I had ever known
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inside that mall, the rescue workers waited as ordered, & as the town grew worried, concerned, heart-hardened, & probably a little angry; helpless * They stood across the street from the mall in separate groups & some in large groups, all with stern faces & low tones of voice & their arms crossed, & further along in the distance there were white tents with helium-filled balloons tied to them, red & blue & green, waving in humid tuffs of air, maybe used as markers for the media crews5, & the balloons glistened in those heavy winds that swept up passed the hills behind them, ready to pop if for any moment the sun were to grow too much for them As it turned out, the police station & town hall were right beside where it happened, north, at the corner of a busy cross section, & the larger group stood there chanting protest slogans as loud as they could, mostly: Save our friends! Never give up! Save our friends! Never give up! & the like, trying to get answers the only way they knew how, but while I watched them in the dim evening light as the sun was disappearing behind the hills & stretched pines, I could see as plain as the sky above me that they werent going to get any answers, & for a while theyll just have to suffer & think its unbearable, terrible, the most horrible thing they could ever feel or imaginethey thought, as the dead thought before their death, the same thought that was swept away in their act of dying Some people even brought their kids, too, mounted on their shoulders with popsicle sticks protruding from their mouths, some laughing, as kids do, some joining in the protest with their parents holding signs, struggling to keep up the rhythm of the protest chant, their bright eyes becoming not so bright, turned dull in the shadows of 6 their parents & the torn remains of a shopping mall ; their dogs on extended leashes wondered to mingle through the growing crowd who were drinking coffee & smoking cigarettes & they all talked with another about, the government is so quick to respond to disasters in third-world countries, but when it happens here they dont do nothing Thats the government for yah, just like that, with this tone, as if to all of them it was a certainty that this assumption was absolutely true, & perhaps it was true, but I cant help but thinking that we were not Japan/Indonesia/New 5 I wonder if they used colored flags to mark the dead among the fractured metal 6 Less than a year ago there was an anti-abortion protest on one of the main streets near my
apartment in Ottawa, & they were marching toward parliament hill, & within the muddled crowd of religious fundamentalists & some right-wing political activists, there were the marching children, shuffling along, being pushed by the crowd, yelling this or that anti-abortion slogan, smiling & laughing away, not fully knowing the significance of what they were saying or the ramifications of their beliefs (regardless if they were in the right or the wrong), merely mimicking the apparatus around them, & I envied them
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Orleans/New York City, which are not third worlds or whole countries anyway / It was something that I couldnt quite fathom Kids or no kids, dogs or no dogs, news or no news, the people kept coming to experience for themselves what the news couldnt give them, vis--vis, in person, to witness all the damage happening in this small, northern town7, the damage & destruction that to them might have seemed both terrible & wondrous, & just like me, everyone wanted to secure their place where they were, right there in the know, in the loop, in the heart of things, the nerve center, making sure they were there for their town, they were part of a community / Ashes to ashes, dust to dust * The catastrophe made the headlines across Ontario & Canada & even in other countries (so someone told me in passing) / The news trucks & journalists were there the very same day & remained for close to a week There was a local man angry & yelling at the news cameras who kept their lenses on him & a whole crowd gathered around him in a circle & listened to him8 as he demanded that all the people form their own rescue mission team, that there shouldnt be the big summer street dance in memory of the hurt or dead & that their should be a riot until the municipality & provincial government & whoever else that was important enough get all those people out from under the rubble, out from what seemed to everyone a certain demise News men & women gave their broadcasts & they all looked a little sharp in their suits & hair all slicked back or perfumed or curled, & they all sounded like the most sincere people you could ever meet while on camera, but when it was off you better believe they were just like you & me, just like you & me, & it made me feel just a little bit sick right down deep in my abdomen, & wouldnt you believe it, sometimes thats how the world goes around, day by day; a hemorrhage of time * Through all of thisas I saw everything, as I saw everyone try to make sense of it all, try & put together whatever they had left (tangible or otherwise emotional), find their loved 7 Even I, for some unknown unconsciousness reason(s), attended this event, if for nothing else
than to stalk the crowds like a vampire looking to feed on the experiences felt by others 8 Some were laughing at him, especially the kids, because to them he seemed foolish & inarticulate, & he was cursing indiscriminately as a little girl looked on in confusion
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ones, their friends, anyone they knew or thought was in that mall as it systematically crumbled, dismantled, et cetera/et ceterathrough all of this, I remained detached, disassociated, defamed, determined to forget, that what had happened actually happened & that it very well could again9 & if it ever did I would remain the same, depersonalized/( free), while others around me grew worse, then the whole god-damned town really would riot in the streets; that one man yelling at the cameras would multiply & demand for the all those potentially buried to be returned alive & well & to be breathing a relieving sigh of ash10 / I could not feel, experience, become engulfed in that state of disillusionment, like my brothers & sisters around me, like, for all practical purposes, those people who were behaving normally in their reciprocal interiorization11 of the tragedy, the tragedy which was death, an ending, finite & absolute / But in death I saw only freedom, the same freedom that had always been confused by all of us for contentment, complacency, as if to be free meant to be in utter bliss, a nirvana state, happiness, the very same kind we have always heard so much about since when we first sprang into this world without sin, a tabla rasa, perhaps only an illusion of innocence, but nonetheless, still the beginning of a whole human life * But I wasnt happy & so it was that none of us were, really, but I would never really know for sure, & neither would the people, they would never know if even they themselves were happy, which, when carefully considered, truly is we all are, fundamentally, in the deep down gut of it, at its core, that we were all strewn about like dust in the wind or fallen leaves flowing down a river,12 lost, crazed, bewildered, & above all else, incorrigible, a byproduct of the, at all times, completely indifferent & impermanent universe13 / Still I saw that it was beautiful Thursday, June 21, 4 days after the mall in Elliot Lake collapsed & everyone we knew was either dead or dying & we would never see them again, was bar night, & although it felt like everyone we knew was either dead or dying & we would never see them again, there was only 2 actually dead, both women, & they were pulled out from underneath the concrete 1 day before, & that was that / It all happened so fast, but first not without a tremendous build up, a sort of anticlimax like you were sitting in a grand-stage theatre waiting for the curtain to open, but it never does, & what lies behind the curtain remains a mystery as you sit there, waiting for something that will never come 9 If they were pulled out dead, they would have to be somehow forced to reanimate, by magic if necessary, anything that would have an end result of life 10 It is as though we all prefer to die to preserve our own shadows. R.D. Laing 11 Ad infinitum. See R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience, Ch. 10. The Mystification of Experience, 1967 12 There are a number of clichs to express this sentiment 13 See Alan Watts, Conversations with Myself, Part 3, 1978
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We drank at a restaurant that was open until 2am every Thursday & wings were discounted & sometimes local bands played, mostly country songs, sometimes covers of other songs, & so we all went & everyone knew everyone After we ate a few pounds of wings & had a few drinks, my friends I began to talk about the mall in a whisper, so no one else could hear, & offered different ideas/opinions/perspectives, our personal takes on the tragedy, after we had without doubt previously thought about it in our private ways / As I looked around at the tables, the people sitting at them, people Ive known/seen/spoke/listened/drank/smoked/laughed/staggered/swore/spat/clapped/walked to&with, I laid back in my chair, & sank into this great nothing where I floated for a moment, but only slightly, & it wafted pass me, this unnamable wash of blank air, a totally unconscious reflex, like I could almost smell it; it was like a long drink of ice-cold water / It didnt mean anything; it was like grabbing a handful of sand & watching it fall through your fingers, but it still had weight inside me, residual, truly indescribable14, like covering the moon with your thumb & one eye shut & watching it disappear / Easy as it came, so it was gone / I was back & I thought about the conversation seconds earlier with my friends, about the people pulled out dead from the concrete & how I, & my friends, & everyone around me, would one day be dead too, & how it was the only thing that binded us, even more than our lives being lived at that moment As the night went on at the bar, we never spoke about Elliot Lake or the mall or the dead, & a local band played as we all gathered there in front of them as the older people went home for the night / As the younger people flooded in, the bar got louder & mobile, people weaving in out of small groups & to the patio to smoke cigarettes or some dope / The band played light & sparse at first, but then picked it up passed 12am, & there was people who danced as they laughed, & we clapped, & some people knew the words & sang them out loud At the after-party the band played soft acoustic songs in the apartment of a stranger, & others who brought guitars played songs too, & just after that the guitar player for the bar band began to play this song I never heard before, a little ballad, played & sung tenderly with a good heart, a nice sound in the small apartment, the lyrics flowed & sounded true As the song played, the morning sun was rising over the lake at Spruce beach, & I lit a cigarette, then laid back into the couch, & began to have the same feeling from back at the bar, & it was then I knew that it was good

14 One morning, 3am, my best friend & I were drunk & smoking dope in a field, & as we were
talking, we experienced a loud, forceful rumble just below our feet from the under the ground, & we looked up each other, not knowing what it was, then took a few steps away from the where we felt & heard the happening, wondering what it was, both secretly frightened at what we couldnt quite explain
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