Jim Watson

To read much of the media coverage of the shootings at the Canadian parliament in Ottawa, you might think that Canada has just lost its innocence—that sleepy Ottawa has finally been dragged into the real world of 21st century security and that Canada had never been the target of terrorism before.

He seemed lost, “didn’t fit in,” and went more than five years without seeing his mother. In recent weeks, he had been staying in a homeless shelter, where he talked about wanting to go to Libya to get away from drugs but griped that he couldn’t get a passport.

The mother of the man accused of killing a soldier at Ottawa’s war memorial then storming Parliament before being shot dead says she is crying for the victims of the shooting, not her son.

Two terror-related attacks on Canadian soldiers in three days have raised fears that the country has become a target for sending troops to Iraq.

A Canadian soldier standing guard at a war memorial in the country’s capital was shot to death Wednesday, and heavy gunfire then erupted inside Parliament. One gunman was killed, and police said they were hunting for as many as two others.