This year’s ceremony for the second anniversary of the Yonge St. van attack will include many of the things that a physical one would've had, such as reading the names of the victims, prayers and a poem.
However, at 6 p.m. on the We Love Willowdale Facebook Page, Torontonians and others will watch a recorded, virtual vigil, that was shot at the Saint George on Yonge Anglican Church earlier this week.
“This is another instance of our trying to bring resilience to our local community,” Alan Sperling said, a member of the We Love Willowdale community group, which is one of the organizations putting on the event.
The recording happened Tuesday at the church, in order to adhere to physical distancing rules, which have temporarily halted mass gatherings of all kinds because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A packed crowd gathered inside the North York Civic Centre last year for the first anniversary, forced indoors because of weather at Mel Lastman Square.
Sperling said he’s anxious to feel the final product.
“We came very quickly to the conclusion that trying to manage a live vigil at the church under the circumstances of the virus, just wouldn’t be practical,” he said.
There will be introduction by the reverend at Saint George, followed by a reading of the names, flowers being put in vases, prayers and a poem.
“It will be the sort of thing that would have been a simple vigil at Mel Lastman Square had the virus not been attacking us,” he said.
Down the road once things get back to normal, Sperling says the organization will also be exploring financing for a permanent memorial in the area.
He adds though it’s very early in the process and they haven’t discussed what it would look like.
“It will be a real community effort,” he said.
Mayor John Tory issued his own statement from City Hall earlier in the day, marking the day of the attack, which killed 10 people and injured 16 others when Alek Minassian drove a white van onto the sidewalks of North York.
“We cannot gather in person to support one another on this tragic anniversary and I know that that can make it more difficult for some to bear, but that will not stop us from remembering all of the lives that were lost on April 23rd, 2018,” he said.
“I know that even though we are now facing a different of challenge with the COVID-19 virus, Torontonians will pull through and they will know that this tragedy is still something that we must mourn together and that we must commemorate together,” he said.
Minassian’s trial was scheduled to begin April 6th - about his state of mind, not whether he did it - but was postponed because of the pandemic, as he faces 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder.
The 10 people who lost their lives:
22-year-old Ji Hun Kim
22-year-old Sohe Chung
30-year-old Anne Marie D’Amico
33-year-old Andrea Bradden
45-year-old Chul Min (Eddie) Kang
45-year-old Renuka Amarasingha
80-year-old Dorothy Sewell
83-year-old Geraldine Brady
85-year-old Munir Najjar
94-year-old Mary Elizabeth (Betty) Forsyth