Love blooms in the face of hate

The following two tabs change content below.

I am writing this from the British Airways lounge at Heathrow Airport Terminal 5, en route to Iceland for the ACI Airport Commercial & Retail Conference. But my thoughts are not of what lies ahead but of my hometown in Christchurch, some 12,000 miles away.

The city is in shock and mourning for the victims of Friday’s terrorist attacks on two city mosques that have left 50 dead and injured dozens more, many critically.

Today, long-time duty free confectionery supplier Stuart Bull, who is visiting Christchurch, sent me the photos below. They lend a new twist, at once both beautiful and appalling, on Christchurch’s long-time sobriquet of ‘the garden city’. As the pictures show, a new kind of garden is taking shape there, one borne from hate but blooming with love.