Vancouver Quadra Liberal MP Joyce Murray was in a hallway when violence broke out on Parliament Hill.
Murray spoke to the Courier just before 3 p.m. Vancouver time while in lockdown.
She was leaving a regional caucus meeting that she chairs and headed to a national caucus meeting, which started at 10 a.m., with two Ontario MPs when they heard unusual noises.
“I was about to head down a set of stairs,” she recalled. “I heard a set of banging sounds that I didn’t recognize as being gunshots frankly. It’s not on your mind. I thought more that something had been dropped down the stairs that was metal and was hitting the stairs all the way down.”
Murray leaned over the balustrade and saw a woman running up the stairs at a fast pace and yelling.
“So clearly there was something amiss,” she said. “There were several of us Liberal MPs in the fifth-floor corridor hesitating — should we go through a different corridor to the north and go down the north stairs?
As the group was considering options, security guards “with a sense of urgency” started to appear in the corridor.
“Very professionally they ensured we all found the nearest open office and told us to go in, lock the door, not look out the windows and keep our heads down until further notice,” she said.
They continued to hear yelling, shots and sounds from the other side of the door. They stayed in the small office for about five hours.
A small TV was in the room, which allowed them to watch news of the War Memorial shooting.
“So we knew it was something related to that,” Murray said.
Murray was calm but worried about security staff and men and women in uniform who were still in harm’s way. “We knew they were the ones that were vulnerable. It was a shock. I think the overriding impression that we had was of the professionalism and calm, or not calm, but directed, coordinated professionalism of the security guards.”
Murray and the other two MPs were eventually moved to a second location, but remained under lockdown.
“This is so unlike what one would expect in Canada. My hope is that there is a more effective means of finding the people that are doing this and preventing it from happening again,” she said. “And that we maintain as a Canadian people our clarity that this is a safe, peaceful [place] where there is rule of law.”
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