When Pascal Coutant walked the streets of Paris early Sunday morning, it was unlike anything the native of the city, who's now a Coquitlam resident, had ever seen.
It had been little more than a day since the terrorist attacks on Friday, Nov. 13 and the streets in this normally bustling city, even at 7 a.m., were practically empty.
"It was just eerily quiet," Coutant told The Tri-City News. "I was on my own in the middle of the street hauling my suitcase to get on an express bus to Charles de Gaulle [Airport]. That was the worst thing for me, the eeriness. The streets were empty."
Sunday morning, Coutant was heading to the airport to board the first direct flight to Vancouver after the terrorist attacks at restaurants, a concert hall and stadium that killed 129 people and injured about 200.
Two nights earlier, he was at a friend's apartment in the eighth arrondissement (the attacks on restaurants and the Bataclan concert hall were in the 10th and 11th while the Stade de France, where the soccer match was taking place, is further north) when he glanced at his phone at about 9:30 p.m.
"I saw there were gun shots… but I was having dinner with friends and you don't want to be rude and look at your phone," Coutant said.
But then another guest, an American, received a call from his mother, who told them what was happening.
Coutant later learned that a woman who attended the same school as he did died at the Bataclan hall.
"I am flabbergasted," he said. "France is a large country but at the end of the day, you're going to know somebody."
On Saturday evening, friends said they'd been at the new James Bond movie, Spectre, on Friday evening when phones started flashing; about 30 got up to leave the theatre to check on family and friends, Coutant said. Another guest, a physiotherapist for the French soccer team, said he heard the first bang outside the stadium but everyone assumed it was a firecracker. After the second one, President Francois Hollande was whisked away to safety but it was several hours before others could leave.
Back in Coquitlam Monday, Coutant was digesting the news that France was now at war, having already targeted several ISIL bases in Syria in airstrikes. And while seven of the eight attackers were killed Friday, Paris investigators were also seeking other terror suspects.
Coutant said France must look to its own past in not doing a better job of integrating waves of immigrants from northern Africa in the 1950s and ’60s, which has resulted in a nation and a city too divided. But neither can France look the other way after the attacks on Friday night, he said, and at the Charlie Hebdo office in January, in which brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi killed 11 people and injured 11 more.
"It can't stand like this," Coutant said. "We don't have a choice. We need to send them a message."
PORT COQUITLAM MOSQUE SENDS MESSAGE OF PEACE
On the night of the Paris terrorist attacks, the Masjid Alhidayah and Islamic Cultural Centre — the Port Coquitlam mosque — posted a message on its website declaring members' solidarity with France.
"We are profoundly saddened and shaken by the attacks that have taken place," the statement reads. "Many of us used to say terrorists are not Muslims. Now, we wonder if they are even humans."
Members of the mosque are being asked to respond to the attacks with compassion and a strong message of peace, and to spread the word through their social media sites using the #MuslimsStandWithParis and #PrayForParis hashtags.
The PoCo mosque's statement also expresses hope that France does not introduce laws unfairly targeting innocent immigrants or citizens.
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