For years, horror and distance were the reaction of most Canadians to school shootings in the United States. Those shootings belonged to a different nation and culture, not to Canada. That divide vanished with the mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, that killed eight people and injured 25.
Tumbler Ridge is a mining town of roughly 2,400 people in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, so remote that cellphone service cuts out about 30 seconds after leaving town. The secondary school where the shooter fired on students and staff has about 160 students. The mother of a 12-year-old girl who is battling for her life in the hospital was friends on Facebook with the killer’s mother, Jennifer Strang, and they both worked at the same mining company. “I will probably know every one of the victims,” the mayor said.
Shootings are not a recurring feature of national life in Canada, and the language used by law enforcement officials also sounded distinctly different. Early police alerts referred to the suspect as a “gunperson,” and a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer described the killer as “female” at a press conference, saying that authorities would respect the suspect’s preferred gender identity.
