Fort St. John, B.C., gathers in remembrance of Tumbler Ridge shooting victims
CBC
More than 100 people gathered in Fort St. John, B.C., on Tuesday night to mourn and pay tribute to the victims of last week’s mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge.
Eight people were killed in the shooting on Feb. 10, including five children and an education assistant at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School. Two other victims were seriously injured.
In the week since the tragedy, vigils have been held across British Columbia and around the country.
Fort St. John is the largest city in northeastern B.C., roughly a two-hour drive from Tumbler Ridge along major highways.
At Tuesday's vigil, photos of the eight victims were on display, surrounded by flowers, while speakers offered words of comfort before observing a moment of silence.
"People here are hurting because people in Tumbler Ridge are hurting," said retired school principal Kathy Scheck.
"We're all really connected there, whether it's through family and friends, or sports."
Scheck helped hand out hot chocolate and coffee at the vigil, volunteering her time to make the city's Festival Plaza feel more welcoming on a cold night that saw wind chill make it feel like –35 C.
As a longtime educator in Fort St. John, Scheck says her thoughts immediately went to students and staff when news broke of the shooting last week.
"I was devastated," she said. "My heart broke for the people there, thinking about how they're going to be able to help those young people continue on in school, in healing, and in finding reasons for the tragedy that happened."
Scheck added communities are on edge, with school safety and lockdown drills at the top of everyone's mind.
"Even as staff, you think that we're never going to have to ... go through a lockdown," she said. "And now that there's been a lockdown really, really close [by] ... it's going to have a lot of people really nervous."
Vigil organizer Amber McGill said Tuesday's event came together quickly after conversations online. She has children of her own, and family in Tumbler Ridge.
"It was shocking. It was really horrifying," McGill said, recalling the moment she first heard the news at home.
Five months ago, Dr. Anne Herdman Royal began a new job in Canada. Driven out of the United States by a shifting political landscape and a mass shooting at the hospital where she worked in Tulsa, Okla., it had become a country she no longer wanted to call home.
Alberta's government — along with the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, and the province’s energy regulator — say they want to crack down on oil and gas companies that don’t pay their property taxes.
Ottawa will now allow rural businesses to employ more temporary foreign workers to help supplement the local workforce, a move Restaurants Canada says will help some restaurants on P.E.I. keep their doors open.
The City of Calgary is reminding people to save water after a recent spike in usage.
The number of visitors to food banks in Mississauga has nearly doubled since the height of the pandemic, says the city's largest food security organization.
After three weeks on the road in Yellowknife doing Inuvialuktun translation for the Northwest Territories legislative assembly, Lillian Elias says she's tired and ready to go home to Inuvik.
Metrolinx is reporting "significant" delays to several GO train lines late Monday afternoon due to a police investigation.
The federal government is spending $14.3 million to support over two dozen Yukon organizations and First Nations governments with arts, culture and language programming.
The war in the Middle East, the fear that it could escalate and the economic consequences were top of mind as Prime Minister Mark Carney met his British counterpart Monday in the United Kingdom at the tail of a whirlwind trip to Europe.
Alberta and Czechia will host the fourth edition of the World Cup of Hockey, a country-versus-country hockey tournament set to hit the ice in February 2028, the NHL announced Monday.
The Ontario government has confirmed it is cutting provincial funding for seven supervised drug consumption sites, days after harm reduction advocates said they were notified of the decision.
In the sprawling labyrinth of shops and showrooms in the Chinese city of Yiwu, parts of what’s widely known as the "world’s supermarket" are beginning to look more like a world-class warehouse.
The lawyer representing Umar Zameer, a man cleared in the death of a Toronto police officer two years ago, says he has "serious misgivings" about an upcoming report into the conduct of several officers involved in the case.