JOHN IVISON School shootings are the most senseless, shattering event that can befall a community. A feeling of ultimate loss grips the entire nation. Political leaders often have nothing more to offer than their condolences, but people want more than that.
They are looking for reassurance, empathy and a sense that someone will do something about it. Mass shootings, like the one Tuesday in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., never leave those they touch, even indirectly. This grab from video shows students exiting the Tumbler Ridge school after deadly shootings, in British Columbia, Canada, Tuesday Feb.
10, 2026. Thirty years ago — March 13th, 1996 — I was working in offices of The Scotsman newspaper in Glasgow when word came through that there were reports of gunfire at a school in Dunblane, a close enough drive that other journalists had their kids in school there. Thomas Hamilton, a local youth leader, had walked into the local primary school and shot 16 five- and six-year-old kids and their teacher, before turning the gun on himself.
Tennis legend Andy Murray, then a nine-year-old student at the school, survived by hiding under the headmaster’s desk. The following days were spent documenting the intense grief and anger of people with no hope of closure. All they wanted was for their leaders to feel their pain, and to act.
The Conservative government of the day proved to be out of step with the emotional climate and calls for gun control. Then prime minister John Major delayed by setting up a judicial inquiry, allowing Tony Blair’s New Labour party to steal the initiative. This photograph provided by local journalist Trent Ernst shows a place near the middle school and high school building where a shooting took place, leaving at least nine people dead in the small town of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, on February 10, 2026.
Blair not only mirrored the public’s grief, he shaped it and drove legislative changes that satisfied its demands. In little more than a year, Blair was prime minister and his government had implemented a near total ban on private ownership of handguns that survives to this day. Blair’s critics may question his sincerity.
In his own autobiography, A Journey, he admitted to being someone who could quickly perceive the emotions of others and instinctively play on them. But he was able to define the gun issue and unite the British nation in a way that no American leader was able to do after the Columbine High School shooting in 1999. We don’t know enough of the facts surrounding the tragedy in Tumbler Ridge yet to know whether there will be public policy implications.
The hospital in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., where nine people were killed and 27 injured in mass shooting. All political parties are behaving with admirable caution, as they did in the final days of the election in April when a car-ramming attack at a Filipino event in Vancouver killed 11 people. Prime Minister Mark Carney was in the city that day and laid a wreath at the site of many of the deaths.
It was the first time that he had had to respond to a national tragedy and he was visibly shaken. But he was a steady hand in the crisis, and appeared comfortable in the role. On Wednesday morning, he provided the kind of supportive actions Canadians want to see, lowering flags on public buildings to half-mast, while trying to create a psychological safe haven for those most impacted.
Carney is a man of genuine empathy, a father of four, and he did not need to coax a tear to convey his compassion. He called it a difficult day for the nation. “This morning, parents, grandparents, sisters and brothers in Tumbler Ridge will wake up without someone they love.
The nation mourns with you, Canada stands with you,” he said, choking up. The leader of the nation clearly feels its pain, and no-one can ask for much more at this stage. National Post jivison@criffel.ca Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion.
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