You’re Nobody Till Somebody Kills You..
Writing by shinda on Friday, 15 of September , 2006
or in Kimveer’s case, you kill somebody. If you read the news, then you know by now that there was a school shooting in Montreal’s Dawson College 2 days ago. Labeled Canada’s Columbine, the press have already jumped on the fact that Kimveer Gill was a desi and are sparing no affiliation they can make to him or any link they can make to other groups to blame for not only his actions but also his death. First it was the Goth scene and the Goth website that he 
frequented, and as Panthic Otpreka wrote, they wasted no time in maligning him with the Sikh Faith. Ironically enough having gone through Kimveer’s user profile on Vampire Freaks he associated himself closer with Satanism, so my question is why has he been labeled a Sikh over a Satanist? The Goth link I can understand, after all its a culture of darkness, with a prominent look on death, but how do you call this guy a Sikh based on his name? Why not link us with Vijay Singh, or Kendal Gill for that case also.
Another interesting twist the media put on his character is that when the Toronto Star produced images from his blog on the front page, they included some of the captions such as the ones that read ‘Anger And Hatred Simmers Within Me’ and upon first reading you’d figure this guy was psychotic right from the start, so why didn’t the website, or his friends report him to the authorities? After seeing the entire gallery its clear that he was just messing around, with his digital camera, and whatever titles he did have, where done so for jokes or just go with the pic’s. At the same time that’s not to say he wasn’t in some way off of his game, but to make a story from things that aren’t there, you’d expect a tad bit more tact.
I know it’s the media’s responsibility to report the story, but it seems like the story is being written on the basis of theories and speculation created by his website then nothing else. For example, ‘He Loved Guns therefore he was a deranged lunatic.’. So liking guns makes one evil? How many Singh’s do you know that haven’t at one point had an AK-47 as there display pic. Fair enough society needs something to blame this on, a video game, movie or music, but why not blame the one thing that really caused this whole thing….anger. Clearly he was angry. At who? well let the police sort that out, but reading the comments on his blog and from TV interviews, it could have very well been society.
“But not everyone who’s angry goes out and shoots up a school”. Fair enough but you push someone to that point and I’m sure they will.
Anyway’s after reading all that there was about this guy, he was a loner, clearly had some social problems, none the less the fact that his profile and image were front page on the Toronto Star, the fact that he got 200+ comments in his user profile that normally wouldn’t have gotten more then 1 or 2 hits goes to show that you truly are nobody till somebody kills you, or in his case you kill somebody in a rampant rage.
Category: News
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tudh baaj kooro koor from 
Made Friday, 15 of September , 2006 at 5:30 pm
Good post.
And i’ve wondered about the linking-based-on-name thing. It’s quite a bit of a dilemma. I can’t say for certain, but I wonder how the papers would react if a Sikh civilian saved 4 people from a burning house. Would they say “Singh/Kaur, a 34 year old Sikh man/woman, pulled the parents and two toddlers from the house….” or would they say that, but exclude the religous affiliation?
I personally think they would kepe the religious affiliation. This is slightly irrelevant since we know that this guy aligned himself with satanism, but I guess for the sake of commenting, might as well make the points.
While I don’t like the religious connections that are made to discriminate, i guess every community would like it if only the positive headlines earned those mentions. Again, aside from the fact that this guy’s definitely not the definition of a sikh, i think IN GENERAL, it’s slightly justified.
Society is still white-first. That doesn’t mean it’s RACIST. Fact is, in the 2001 census, 72% of canadians are either Catholic or Protestant. Therefore when a non-catholic/protestant does something, it’s defined because it’s minority…AGAIN, this is NOT to justify the reporting because, for this case especially, we already know that this dude has kept probably ZERO of Sikhis’ teachings and moved almost entirely (if not entirely) to satanism. In this particular case, it clearly woulda been a better approach to show that this dude had denounced sikhism as his faith of choice.
And once again, I personally think that we get both sides of the coin. If a Sikh guy gets beat up in the strets by a gang, and he’s willing to get the media involved, i’m pretty sure the media would say “The 17 year old Singh, who is a Sikh, was attacked by 12 armed youths”.
Or like when that whole thing with the knife went down in brampton/malton a few months ago, i was pleasantly surprised to see that the papers didn’t go out and say “Brampton/Malton is an area densely populated by sikhs” or make any of those cmoments.
That kind of comment would have been uncalled for, but i think for the most part, there’s really not that much unfair coverage.
After all, Shinda will remember that in his school-town, Balpreet Singh went through an issue, and the local papers and television media did a very effective job of portraying Sikhs pretty positively.
I think it’s just natural for communities to not want to associate with people who commit negative deeds.
Ranjit Sion from
Made Friday, 15 of September , 2006 at 5:48 pm
if you want u can go thru is journal enries too, you can see that he was totally agianst relgion, god and anything else associatied with sikhi or even any faith, he was obviously deluded to somepoint, he didntrefer to others as “people” but used words like “animals” or “these humans” continually sayng how they are inferior then him, hankarri guy, at the same time he was an inntellectual to some point, this guy has some poetry written in his journals, theye really well written soo for a psycho he was good at english at least, and thats notthat easy. yea he loved guns, but was filled with hankar and hate, lived alone with his mom, but said he hates his parents soo i donno hes reallly messed up illl finish this later
Jaspaul Singh from
Made Friday, 15 of September , 2006 at 11:40 pm
shows how messed up people can be nowadays .. reli saad ..
Tempest G from
Made Saturday, 16 of September , 2006 at 10:04 pm
…its society that does that to you…the system is corrupt…it design in such a way to make u go wack..what he did was wrong no doubt …but not everyone has the pulling to gurbani as some of you’s..some go crazy…some handle it happy….
