Earlier today, Emily submitted a post about Canadian House of Commons Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers getting a standing ovation from parliamentarians on all sides of the House for putting an end to the terrorist scumbag who killed Corporal Nathan Cirillo at the Canadian War Memorial yesterday and saving countless lives of those inside Centre Block on Parliament Hill.

This is not the first time a Canadian Sergeant-at-Arms has been received so warmly. In May 1984, a Canadian corporal named Denis Lortie left his base and proceeded to the Quebec National Assembly where he shot and killed three people and injured 13 others. Lortie held several people hostage in the National Assembly chambers as he sat in the Speaker’s Chair. The Sergeant-at-Arms was a WWII and Korean War vet named René Marc Jalbert. He walked into the chamber and began talking to Lortie who responded by shooting in his general direction. Undeterred, Jalbert showed Lortie his military ID card and convinced Lortie to do the same. He then proceeded to convince Lortie to release the hostages and then invited him into office (effectively turning himself into a hostage) where he would spend several hours talking with him before finally convincing Lortie to surrender. Jalbert would be bestowed with the Cross of Valour by the Canadian government later that year. Jalbert died in 1996.

Of course, there was no reasoning to be done with Michael Zehaf-Bibeau. Jihadists are not amenable to reason. Vickers did the only thing that could have been done under the circumstances.

Nevertheless both Kevin Vickers and René Marc Jalbert are men of exceptional bravery and a lot of people are fortunate to be alive because of their courage.