Survivor of 1975 Ottawa school shooting reflects on trauma and the need for compassion

WARNING: This article contains graphic details and may affect those who have experienced​ ​​​sexual violence or know someone affected by it.

As the country tries to come to grips with the shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., this week, a prominent New Democrat stepped forward to share the horror of the school shooting she survived and to impart her hopes for those impacted by this latest tragedy.

Anne McGrath is best known a major progressive political operator who served as her party's national president, national director and chief of staff to former Alberta NDP premier Rachel Notley.

What many don't know about McGrath is that 50 years ago she was a 17-year-old student at St. Pius X High School in Ottawa when a student she knew burst into her classroom and opened fire with a shotgun.

"Fifty years ago nobody talked about these things," she told CBC's Power & Politics host David Cochrane.

"The message always was to move on, to get past it, to not bring it up and so I have actually lived most of my life not talking to people about it."

On the morning of Oct. 27, 1975, Robert Poulin, a student who sat in front of McGrath in algebra class, raped and murdered 17-year-old Kim Rabot, who was a student at Glebe Collegiate Institute.

Poulin then took a sawed-off pump-action shotgun he'd bought at Giant Tiger, biked to his high school and kicked open the door of classroom 71 where McGrath was attending a lesson with other students.

She remembers hitting the floor to hide as Poulin fired his gun, seriously injuring 18-year-old Mark Hough. All other students in the class survived but Hough died a month later from his injuries.

There were no lockdown protocols, no active shooter drills in those days and certainly no real understanding of how to meet kids leaving the school that day and make sure they got home safely, she said. 

"When we finally did leave, there was nowhere to go," McGrath said. "I remember, for instance, walking down the backstreets by myself, hiding behind trees and bushes every time a car would come by in case there were shooters everywhere."

McGrath said that without mobile phones, social media or police telling them the shooter had taken his life and was no longer a threat, they didn't know what to do. 

"It was total chaos. We were like zombies and we scattered," she said. "I remember going to the police station later that night to give a witness statement, or whatever it was, not realizing that I had blood and brains in my hair. 

"It was an unreal experience, you know, and I don't think you ever feel completely safe after something like that," she said.