Things didn’t seem to go as well as they did for me last week-end, certainly not in Toronto, where a “Violent Thanksgiving weekend in Toronto area claims eight lives“.

On Thanksgiving Monday, police were called to a home in Toronto’s north end after two women were stabbed to death. The victims were identified as Susan John, 43, and her mother Saramma Varughese, 65. Another woman in the house escaped and ran to neighbours for help.

A neighbour, Nathaniel O’Brien, 31, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder .

He was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday.

On Saturday night, three people were killed and four were critically injured following separate incidents in just over four hours in nearby Mississauga, Ont.

A 29-year-old man was shot and killed and two other men seriously injured at an engagement party just before midnight.

In a separate incident several hours later, a 19-year-old man died, and a 20-year-old man was seriously injured after they were stabbed in a fight.

Early Sunday morning, 22-year-old man was gunned down next to a restaurant and rushed to hospital, where he later died.

The weekend got off to a bloody start on Thursday when three men were shot in Toronto’s north end.

One of the men succumbed to his injuries on Saturday night.

In another incident, also on Thursday, two men drowned after a minivan hurdled into Lake Ontario.

Police are calling the deaths “suspicious” and are investigating the possibility of a murder-suicide.

While I am very proud to be Canadian and I am certain things are a lot better here than in many places in the world (say, the United States for example), I think it’s about time we stopped fooling ourselves into believing that things are still going as well as they used to. One step would be to be more active in our communities. So… please go vote 🙂