Security and solidarité in Paris

Posted By Spencer Van Dyk on Nov 17, 2015 | 0 comments



© Scott Bedard

Canadian Scott Bedard should have been in the 10th arrondissement of Paris on Friday night when the city was attacked and 129 people died. The 28-year-old should have been right next to Café Bonne Bière, where five people were killed. But he got a call from a friend that may have saved his life.

“I’ve never seen Paris like that in my life, and I hope never to again,” he said.

Bedard is a Torontonian and former resident of Ottawa now studying and working in Edinburgh, Scotland. He intended to have dinner at the restaurant Death by Burrito, owned by a friend. He changed plans after a friend suggested going to the theatre in the 13th arrondissement instead.

After the play, he and his friend took the Metro up to Les Halles where he was staying. When he emerged, he checked his cellphone and saw messages asking if he was OK.

Instead of taking cover inside, Bedard walked the streets, looking for people who were caught in the chaos following the attacks. A few blocks from his flat, Bedard came across a police raid.

“The police arrived and they pushed everyone back,” he said. “They were raiding an underground parking garage that was just down the street where they thought the attackers had retreated after the attack. Turns out they hadn’t, and they weren’t there, but they thought they were there, and they thought there was going to be a gunfight.”

The next day, Bedard went to all of the attack sites. He said it was sad and also tense; people were crying as they were doing their shopping. But he added that he never thought of leaving the city early.

“Whether or not we could do something substantial, it was just about support, just to show that we were in this together,” he said.

Even before Friday’s attacks, Paris was bracing for heightened security ahead of climate change talks, dubbed COP21, which begin in less than two weeks.

On Tuesday, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced that 115,000 security personnel have been mobilized in the wake of the attacks.

Bedard predicts that the country’s heightened security will affect ordinary people moving around more than it will affect diplomats in the upcoming climate conference.

Another Canadian, Raghad Khalil, has been studying in Paris since September, but was in Rome when the attacks happened. She arrived back in Paris on Monday and said that border security did not seem out of the ordinary. But since she’s been back in Paris, she said she hasn’t been able to go anywhere in the city without seeing paramilitary police and soldiers.

She had her bags searched at a McDonald’s and at a grocery store. Some of the friends she was with in Rome live within 500 metres of the Bataclan, where more than 80 people were killed at a rock concert.

Here in Ottawa, the French ambassador, Nicolas Chapuis, appeared at a previously scheduled event at Carleton University on Monday to talk about the expectations and challenges leading up to COP21.

“There will be a sense of solidarity, mourning and unity in the international community, which is conducive to an agreement,” he said after his speech. “But let’s not thrive on the idea that to get a climate agreement, we have to have young people killed. Let’s be cautious.”