Watching the Olympics most of the day. Turning to the news channels before hitting the hay. Turn to CBC news world and there is something about a shooting in Tumblr Ridge, BC. I don’t think much of it. Wake up this morning and I see that 10 people are dead, with the shooter taking their own life. This happened at a school. Shock.
Things like this don’t happen in Canada. The last major school shooting happened back in 1989 at a university, in Quebec, Ecole Polytechnique, where14 women were shot dead, before the shooter took his own life.
This does not happen in Canada. It just does not. We often times look down smugly, at our neighbours to the south at all the school shootings, and all the mass shootings and we go tsk, tsk. This just does not happen in Canada.
Well it did last night. The details are still very sketchy. There are 10 dead including the shooter. Two of the dead were found in a nearby residence. There are also 25 wounded. Tumblr Ridge is a community of only 2400 people. So everybody knew everybody. It will take years, if ever, for the community to recover from that. There are rumours that the shooter might’ve been female. But, for now, this is just rumors.
The details are still very sketchy. The motive is not known and may never be known. How the person accessed the weapon still has to be determined. Right now, the community and the country is in shock. Because this just does not happen here in Canada, but it did. Though I have mocked this phrase in the past because it has been used too often by politicians who don’t really care, Tumbler Ridge truly is in our thoughts and prayers.
Treasure your day, today.