When a Country Grieves: Reflections on the Tumbler Ridge School Shooting

Reflections on the Tumbler Ridge school shooting, collective grief, and the illusion of safety in Canada

I’ve been chewing on this all week.

Writing it. Rewriting it.

Trying to wrap my head around what happened in Tumbler Ridge.

The Tumbler Ridge School Shooting Happened Here

A mass shooting at a school in British Columbia — here, in our country.

It’s devastating. Completely and undeniably devastating.

Children. Teachers. Families. A community that will never be the same.

That alone is enough to break your heart.

And then there’s another layer.

It happened here.

In Canada.

We are the country that tells ourselves we’re safe.

We are the country that watches these stories unfold somewhere else and feels horror — but also distance.

We are the country that has quietly believed, “That doesn’t happen here.”

And now we can’t say that the same way.

Teachers barricading doors.

Parents seeing police cars and EMS outside a school and panicking — Is that my child?

That realization lands in the body.

I felt it before I could think it.

A heaviness in my chest.

A kind of ache that didn’t move.

A protective tightening in my shoulders when I pictured classrooms, parents, educators.

It’s grief.

It’s rage.

It’s disbelief.

It’s heartbreak layered with disorientation.

Safety feels thinner.

And when safety thins, even slightly, our nervous systems react.

We hold our children closer.

We scan headlines differently.

We notice exits in buildings we’ve walked into a hundred times before.

There’s something else I’ve been noticing.

Driving this week, I’m seeing flags lowered. Police vehicles parked outside schools. Subtle signs that a community — and a country — is marking something.

It feels like the country is breathing differently.

You can feel it in conversations.

In the way people pause before speaking.

In the quiet tone that creeps into discussions about schools and safety.

It’s as if we’re all holding something heavy at the same time.

A tightening in the chest.

A collective inhale that hasn’t fully released yet.

We don’t always recognize collective grief when we’re inside it.

But it’s there.

In lowered flags.

In headlines that linger.

In the subtle shift in how we move through public spaces.

A country can grieve.

And right now, it feels like we are.

This is grief.

Not only for the lives lost — though that grief is sacred and immense.

But grief for innocence.

Grief for the version of ourselves who believed we were insulated.

Grief for the steady background belief that schools were simply schools.

Collective grief doesn’t always look like tears.

Sometimes it looks like tension.

Like hyper vigilance.

Like irritability.

Like a country breathing a little differently.

But it is grief.

And naming it matters.

This is devastating because it is devastating.

This community deserves our full attention and grief.

And still — it forces us to confront something we didn’t want to question.

I wish I didn’t have to write this.

I wish parents didn’t lose children.

I wish children didn’t lose classmates.

I wish families weren’t forever changed in a single morning.

I wish parents never had to see emergency vehicles pull up to a school and feel their heart drop into their stomach.

I wish no one ever had to wonder, even for a second, Is that my child?

I wish teachers didn’t have to barricade doors.

I wish lockdown drills weren’t part of a curriculum.

I wish educators could just teach.

I wish this wasn’t part of our story.

But it is.

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There’s something else I’ve been sitting with.

And I want to say this gently, but honestly.

This isn’t only professional for me.

In my work — and in my personal life — I have been on both sides of violence.

I have received the devastating call that someone I loved had been murdered.

I have stood in the shock of that kind of news — the kind that splits your life into before and after.

And I have also lived through the unbearable complexity of being connected to someone who caused profound harm.

That is a different kind of devastation.

But it is devastation all the same.

The pain is not comparable — and it should not be.

The pain of losing someone to violence is shattering, raw, irreversible.

The pain of being connected to the person who caused that harm carries its own horror — layered with shame, confusion, stigma, and grief that has nowhere comfortable to land.

Both alter you.

Both fracture families.

Both ripple through communities for years.

Nothing about acknowledging that complexity diminishes what happened in Tumbler Ridge.

Nothing softens the loss.

But I know, in my bones, that violence does not appear out of nowhere.

There are fractures long before headlines.

There are untreated wounds.

There are mental health struggles that go unseen or unsupported.

There are systems that fail quietly until they fail loudly.

That does not excuse harm.

It does not lessen responsibility.

But if we truly want fewer communities devastated like this, we have to be willing to look at what happens long before the worst day.

I don’t say this from theory.

I say it from lived experience.

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And if your body feels heavy this week, that makes sense.

If your chest feels tight.

If you feel unsettled or hyper-aware.

If you feel protective, angry, numb, or all of it at once.

That makes sense too.

When something shakes our sense of safety, our bodies go into protection.

A few small things can help steady you:

Pause and notice your breath — not to change it, just to feel it moving in and out.

Put your feet flat on the floor and gently press down. Feel the ground holding you.

Name five things you can see around you. Let your eyes land on something neutral or calming.

Limit how much coverage you consume. Caring does not require constant exposure.

If you have children, connect before you correct. Offer steadiness rather than alarm.

We cannot undo what happened in Tumbler Ridge.

But we can tend to our nervous systems.

We can steady ourselves.

We can show up grounded for the children and communities around us.

Devastation and regulation can exist in the same space.

And right now, both are needed.

If You’re Feeling This More Deeply

Events like Tumbler Ridge don’t only impact one community.

They can stir up old grief.

Past trauma.

Anxiety about safety.

Questions you thought were settled.

If this week feels heavier than it “should,” you are not overreacting.

You are responding.

And you don’t have to hold that alone.

If you need support, here are some places you can reach out across Canada:

If you are in immediate danger, call 911.

Talk Suicide Canada

Call or text 9-8-8 (24/7, across Canada)

Kids Help Phone

Call 1-800-668-6868 or text CONNECT to 686868 (24/7)

Hope for Wellness (for Indigenous peoples across Canada)

Call 1-855-242-3310 or visit hopeforwellness.ca for chat support

Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA)Visit cmha.ca to find local branches and community supports

If you are connected to a school community, reach out to your school board for counselling and crisis supports that may be available locally.

If you already have a therapist or counsellor, this is an appropriate time to book an appointment.

And if you don’t, consider this your reminder that support is not weakness — it is care.

You are allowed to steady yourself.

You are allowed to ask for help.