Mass shootings are rare in Canada, but the tragedy in Tumbler Ridge Tuesday will go down as one of the deadliest in the country’s history.
The shooter killed eight people, making it one of the worst cases of gun violence recorded in B.C., but still a deeply uncommon event in this country.
“This is not the kind of thing that happens up here,” University of the Fraser Valley criminologist Wade Deisman told CTV News on Wednesday, describing the mindset many Canadians have when it comes to mass shootings.
“So it takes us aback and it’s completely shocking and devastating when it does occur as it has now.”
This shooting evokes memories of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal, in which the shooter killed 14 women.
And while people are fixated on learning the motivation of the Tumbler Ridge shooter, some argue that knowledge has its limitations.
“We search for answers in an environment where there will be no good answers,” said Simon Fraser University criminologist Garth Davies.
“Even if we know exactly, directly what the motive is—Marc Lepine in 1989 was very clear on what his motive was in terms of killing women and being anti-feminist in his attack—that doesn’t change the attack.”
This mass shooting is the deadliest in Canada since the Nova Scotia attacks in 2020, in which a man using a replica RCMP cruiser went on a spree that left 22 people dead.
With mass shootings much rarer in Canada than south of the border, the ones that do happen tend to stick in the collective memory in a different way.
“It happens (in the U.S.) with regularity and it seems to be that the next day there’s another event, so it almost seems like they’re inured to some of the violence, where this is such a rare instance to happen in Canada,” said Davies.
Now the people of Tumbler Ridge are left to mourn, along with the rest of the country