Dawson students return to school after shooting

Some cried and hugged, while others held hands and wore pink asstudents returned to Montreal's Dawson College on Monday for the first time since a gunman killed one woman and injured 19 others in a shooting rampage last week.

For the students, it wasa day to reclaim the hallways where terror struck five days ago. The schoolreopened at 11 a.m., a day before classes are scheduled to resume, in order to allow them to pick up their abandoned belongings and meet with teachers and counsellors.

Students massed together to enter as a group at 19 minutes before 1 p.m., the same time Kimveer Gill opened fire at the school last Wednesday.

A crowd of onlookers cheered and clapped as students made their way past the shrine of flowers and notes strewn around the college gates.

Few students spoke as they walked up the stairs to the entrance on de Maisonneuve Street, the same doors Gill used to enter the school.

Many were dressed in pink as a homage to Anastasia De Sousa, the 18-year-old woman who was shot dead in the attack. Her parents and friends said she favoured the colour.

Some students shot in the rampage were well enough to show up at the college on Monday in wheelchairs and on crutches. Two of the victims remain in critical condition and five others are still in hospital.

The gathering was emotionally charged, said Romina Perrotti.

"The mood was very supportive," said Perrotti. "People are actually very encouraging."

Perrotti admits it will be hard for her, and other students, to get back into their old routines. "It will be hard to readapt," she said, "but slowly, it will sink in."

Returning to the campus and walking down the same hallways where De Sousa died and 19 others were wounded is difficult but necessary, Dawson student union president Melanie Hotchkiss said Monday morning.

"We have to go back as soon as possible because the longer that we put it off, the harder it is going to be to go back," Hotchkiss said. "I think that we need to find some way to try and face it."

Students were e-mailing and text messaging each other over the weekend about the plan for a mass re-entry, said student Dennis Bobyk.

"I think it will be good for everyone to get together, and it's just an occasion for everyone to talk about it and to go through the healing process of it all," he said.

Administrators at the school said they hope students will return to their normal scheduleson Tuesday. The deadline to drop courses at the college has been extended, to give students more time to decide on their fall semester workload.

But Dawson College director Richard Filion would like to see most students return full-time. "We truly believe that for their own well-being, the students have to come back to the college, just to go through that trauma," said Filion. "If we want to go back to some normality, we have to go back to the usual."

The De Sousa familyreceived condolences at the Alfred Dallaire funeral home on St. Martin Boulevard East in Laval on Monday afternoon and evening. The city of Montreal's public transit authority offeredfree shuttle bus service to students from Dawson College to the funeral home.

Thefuneral itself willbe held Tuesday morning at a church in Montreal's east end.

Gun control revisited

Dawson College was front and centre in the House of Commons as MPs returned from their summer holidays to resume sitting. The session started with a moment of silence in honour of Anastasia De Sousa, the 18-year-old who was killed in the shootings.

The debate quickly turned to gun control, with interim Liberal leader Bill Graham accusing Prime Minister Stephen Harper of wanting to dilute the country's firearms laws.

"We should be strengthening rules, we shouldn't be tossing some of them out," Graham told the House of Commons. "The prime minister's right-to-bear-arms constituency is blinding him to a very important tool that protects our kids from being shot."

Graham urged Harper to reconsider keeping the gun registry as his government prepares to revise the system this fall. "Bring in other laws, but keep an important tool that has been proven by the police [to] work," he said.

Harper vowed to take steps to control the purchase of guns by unstable people. But he reminded the House that the gun registry did not prevent the Dawson shootings. Gunman Kimveer Gill bought his guns legally and registered his weapons.

"Today's laws did not protect us," said Harper. "The events at Dawson College tell us precisely that. We take no pleasure on this side of the House from having warned the previous government repeatedly over the past decade that the gun registry would not prevent this kind of occurrence."

Harper said he has spoken to the RCMP's acting and deputy commissioners to review the facts in the Dawson shooting case.