Peninsula Daily News and Victoria News
VICTORIA — Port Angeles Mayor Cherie Kidd, in Victoria for Canada Day with a contingent of local business owners and residents earlier this week, said her delegation was not near the provincial Parliament Buildings where an attempt to leave pressure-cooker bombs was thwarted by Canadian authorities.
“I don’t feel at any time our group was in any physical potential danger,” Kidd said, who traveled with a delegation of about 30 local business people and other well-wishers to Victoria for the Canada Day celebrations.
Additionally, Kidd said she felt the Canada Day celebrations were not disturbed by the law enforcement response.
“I am so grateful for the security people keeping us safe and not letting anyone know there was any type of disturbance,” Kidd said.
Canadian authorities arrested a man and a woman Monday for attempting to leave pressure-cooker bombs — the type that exploded at the Boston Marathon earlier this year — at the legislative building where thousands of people were gathered outside for Canada Day.
Kidd said she first heard about the attempted bombing from a reporter from The Globe and Mail who called her Tuesday to talk about the event.
“I was called [Tuesday] by the reporter [asking] my reaction to that, and it was news to me,” Kidd said.
Kidd said her delegation was among the roughly 2,000 people who gathered on the Parliament Buildings’ expansive lawn to form a “living” Canadian flag, with Kidd and her contingent wearing red shirts and standing in the middle to help form the flag’s maple leaf.
“We had a perfect day for Canada Day,” Kidd said.
According to a Royal Canadian Mounted Police spokesman, John Stewart Nuttall, 39, and Amanda Marie Korody, 29, had committed to their intended day of terror in early March, settling on Nuttall’s former hometown of Victoria during the national holiday.
But unknown to the couple from the Vancouver, B.C., suburb of Surrey, their every move — from site selection to bomb making — had been monitored by the RCMP and other Canadian federal intelligence agencies.
University of Victoria Professor Scott Watson, an expert in international terrorism, said the couple “appear to be two disgruntled Canadians who have read al-Qaida material online and then have decided to take this type of action.”
Police quoted neighbors in Surrey reporting hearing Nuttall shouting about jihad on the phone.
Nuttall and Korody, whom the RCMP described as welfare recipients with methadone prescriptions, were focused strongly enough on their task to warrant the attention of Canada’s national anti-terrorism squad.
PDN Reporter Jeremy Schwartz and the Victoria News contributed to this report.
