On Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, a gunman opened fire on a synagogue in Belleville, Ontario. On Monday morning, Ezra Levant spoke with Mike Devolin, the security guard who was inside the building when it happened.

Mike says the first thing he heard was shots — and they sounded like they were coming from the roof. He and another man both looked up at the same moment.

"That was a heavy rifle," he said. "I grew up on a farm in the bush. I know about rifles." The bullets came through the stained glass windows. He watched them break the glass as they came in.

Inside, the synagogue president immediately called for everyone to get down and move into the main room. About 20 congregants — including some young children — dropped to the floor and took cover. Mike stayed up enough to watch what was happening.

Outside, he says, it was a gun battle. More than 20 shots, easily. "They just kept going."

The officer who stopped the attack was alone. He was posted in an unmarked vehicle in the synagogue driveway — which may be exactly why the gunman didn't see him coming.

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"I think this guy didn't know it was a cop sitting there," Mike told Ezra. The element of surprise may have saved every life in that building. The officer was injured, but he took the attacker down. Other officers arrived on the shortly thereafter. A heavily armed SWAT team was eventually deployed and swept the building. A drone was spotted over the area.

Police initially indicated there may have been two suspects, though only one — a 29-year-old man — has been publicly confirmed as arrested. The congregation was loaded onto a bus and taken to the police station to give statements.

What Mike told Ezra next is something police will need to follow up on in the days to come. 

A week before the attack, during the previous service, Mike noticed a man sitting in an SUV parked directly outside the synagogue. He was there for well over an hour, on his phone, and was not connected to anyone inside.

Mike approached him. The man said nothing — not a word. Mike told him he was making people nervous. About 10 minutes later, the man drove away.

Mike reported the incident to police. The man in the SUV, Mike said, was South Asian and matched the age of the suspect in custody.

"Could be nothing," Mike said. "Or it could be someone scoping the joint."

There will be no Yom Kippur services at that synagogue today. The building is sealed. The stained glass windows are shattered. And a police officer who was quietly sitting alone in an unmarked car — probably unnoticed, probably unremarkable — is the reason the congregation is alive to see another day.

"That cop saved our lives," Mike said. "If it wasn't for him, we probably could have been dead this morning. All dead."

Antisemitism is not new to Canada's cities. But Belleville is not Toronto, and yet here we are.

"It seems like antisemitism is everywhere," the security guard, who is not Jewish, told Ezra. "And I think it's accepted as the new normal now."

That's a sentence that should shame every politician who has spent the last several years offering thoughts and prayers while doing nothing to stop what's coming through the border.