Image courtesy of CTV
I’m having a pretty normal week. The usual ups and downs. But every once in a while, a whisper of sadness swirls through my head. And I think, “What have I got to be sad about?” And then I remember Tumbler Ridge all over again. I expect that feeling will be with me for a while. I can’t imagine what it must be like for the people of that town, and how long it will last for them.
Not that I need reminding. As everyone knows, the media coverage has been widespread. How extensive? A friend of mine first heard about the shooting on a Ukrainian news report. So, everyone who publishes anything has to ask themselves whether the posting is appropriate and/or necessary. Several politicians made reference to the need to set politics aside for the moment and speak to the people who need our support.
But that time has passed, and I feel that discussing the media coverage is appropriate. Two points need to be made:
First: The Obvious Question: No matter the needs of the rest of the country to deal with this, the first priority of everyone, and especially the media, must be the needs of the grieving families and the wider circle of their friends and fellow townspeople.
How Much is Too Much?
On that topic, it is very difficult to formulate a single opinion about how much media attention is proper. Yes, the people of Canada are united in their grief and horror. We want information. We need to foster the illusion that somehow that helps. But when do the numerous pictures of crying people stop being news and start becoming entertainment? When does it stop being a shared experience and start being self-satisfying?
As far as the grieving families, for some people the chance to tell others about their loved one brings a certain amount of satisfaction. Likewise, hearing the support and sympathy from such a wide range of people might help. So media facilitates the communication of emotion, and that’s the good side.
Second: A Tragedy Waiting to Happen
Many people stated over and over in the media how this situation was senseless and impossible to understand. I beg to differ. Looked at in the broader sense, the tragedy was neither isolated nor unpredictable. Statistics from the U.S., Canada and Europe are indisputable.
- The Canadian medical system does not provide enough coverage for those who need it. Look at Vancouver’s Downtown East Side if you disagree. DES has a concentration of services which attracts clients. At the opposite end, the rural areas of the province have scattered facilities dealing with an even further scattered clientele.
- Canada has a large population of reactionary right-wingers with no sympathy for anyone different from their WASP, bisexual roots. This segment is spread through the rural areas where the lack of services is felt the deepest.
Going on what little information we have about the shooter, it is easy to speculate that they were confused about their sexuality from a young age. High school, which the shooter left early, is where that sort of personality receives the most cruelty. It is no surprise that many mass shootings happen in high school. The formative teen years create long-lasting trauma that erupts in predictable places.
- Canada has a gun culture that has long since outlived our pioneering heritage. Of course, we can always blame the legal system for giving that endangered family their guns back. I can guarantee the RCMP did not want to do that. We need better laws in that area, but resistance is high among the same people who contributed to the shooter’s mental problems. I have a lot of questions around this topic. How many homes in Tumbler Ridge have weapons in them? How many of those weapons are legal? How many of them are stored safely? How is Tumbler Ridge different in this respect from a thousand other small Canadian communities? I suspect not very different at all.
- One obvious takeaway is that our mental health act and our firearms restrictions laws are out of synch.
The Bottom Line
I hope the mainstream media have had the sense to allow those who need to speak out a chance to do so, and the sensitivity to let those who wish anonymity have the space to suffer in privacy.
The only way to give this tragedy meaning is to use it to spur progress in the control of weapons in this country. Australia tightened their firearms restrictions after a serious massacre in 1996, and statistics show a huge drop in firearms-related deaths.
Canada needs to do the same.