We are all connected

In 1990, a young news photographer, Tom Hanson, was covering the Oka Crisis in Quebec when he took this photo. The subject was Richard Nicholas, a Mohawk warrior waving his rifle while standing atop an overturned Sûreté du Québec police van. The two men never met.

On March 10, Tom Hanson, aged 41, collapsed while playing hockey in Ottawa and died shortly after. That very same day, Richard Nicholas, also aged 41, died in a motor vehicle accident in Quebec.

We are all connected in ways impossible to fathom, and last Tuesday one such connection was shattered by tragedy, 19 years after two very different men briefly crossed paths.

Photo: Tom Hanson