A pastor in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., where police say a shooter killed nine people and themselves in one of the deadliest mass shootings in Canadian history, said he and other spiritual leaders did what they could to hold the small community together on Tuesday.
“The idea was to be just available,” George Rowe, pastor at Tumbler Ridge Fellowship Baptist Church, told CTV’s Your Morning on Wednesday.
“I don’t have the answers; none of us have got the answers, but just to come alongside our people and let them know that they’re loved and we’re with them.”
Rowe said he and other pastors were “out and about” after a community-wide lockdown was lifted following the shooting which took place Tuesday afternoon. The majority of the victims were killed inside the community’s high school, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
By the evening, Rowe said that many people had gathered at the local recreation centre, including some of the families of the victims.
“I think the big thing that hit me was (people) not knowing, ‘Did my child survive this?’ That was just a heartbreaking situation,” said Rowe. “Outside of that, we as pastors, we just go in and be there.”
He said one of the most important things he and other community leaders can do is simply listen to the loved ones of the victims, “just to be there to hear their heart crying.”
“To look into their face and watch their body language can be very disturbing emotionally, to the point that you have to be careful yourself, as well,” Rowe said.
But he noted that the community had also received many outside messages and offerings of support.
“We’ve got help coming in, we’ve got people calling from literally all over the country; they want to come in and offer counselling services, so we’re making our churches available where possible,” he said.
The community’s pastors are set to meet Wednesday and Thursday to help make funeral and celebration of life arrangements in the coming days and weeks, said Rowe.
The feeling in the northern B.C. community the day after the shooting was difficult to explain, he added. “We’re so grateful that so many of our kids got out of there alive,” he said, “but yet so heartbroken that some of them didn’t make it.”