Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, is a town of 2,300 people in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Peace River country. On Wednesday, it became the site of one of Canada’s deadliest mass shootings. A trans-identifying 18-year-old named Jesse Strang (Van Rootselaar) murdered his mother and 11-year-old stepbrother before heading to Tumbler Ridge High School, where he killed a teacher and five children (three 12-year-old girls, a 12-year-old boy, and a 13-year-old boy) and injured more than 25 before shooting himself.
As flags across a mourning nation were lowered to half-mast, Canada began making international headlines not just due to the tragedy, but because the horrific events showcased for the world the extent to which transgender ideology has conquered the country. When the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were alerted to the presence of an active shooter in the high school, they issued a public alert describing the suspect as “a female in a dress with dark hair.” (To their credit, the officers rushed directly into the school.)
In the immediate aftermath, the RCMP referred to the shooter as “the deceased gunperson” to avoid referring to the trans-identifying shooter as male. The term has never before been used in an official capacity, and it instantly made headlines in The Sun, The New York Post, Sky News, GB News, and elsewhere. When asked, an RCMP spokesperson stated, “We identify the suspect as they chose to be identified in public and in social media.” The Toronto Star published a short, inaccurate headline: “Police identify 18-year-old female Jesse Van Rootselaar as Tumbler Ridge school shooter.”
Many mainstream Canadian journalists initially refused to identify the killer, and the story was left to independent media outlets like Juno News, which had reporters calling the killer’s family members in Tumbler Ridge and doing the sort of shoe-leather journalism that once defined the profession. Jesse Strang, as it turns out, was a deeply disturbed young man who began to “identify” as a “girl” around 2023; the profile picture of his YouTube account is “an anime-style figure overlaid on a transgender pride flag alongside an SKS rifle.” His mother Jennifer had previously posted about his behavioral issues and defended the transgender cause on Instagram.
Once the facts could no longer be ignored, much of the Canadian press shifted into damage control mode. CityNews appears to have applied beauty filters to photos of him to make him appear more female. The CBC, Canada’s government-funded state broadcaster, referred to Strang by female pronouns and stated that “the 18-year-old was assigned male at birth, but began transitioning to female about six years ago.” One LGBT activist claimed that Strang, in fact, was the “first victim” of the mass killing that ended the lives of five children because he suffered from the “small mindset” of the small town of Tumbler Ridge. (When asked by a journalist pursuing this narrative, the police said there is no evidence Strang was bullied at school.)
Just hours after the shooting, the CBC published a long piece featuring interviews with LGBT activists debunking “false claims about trans people” and mass shootings, as did CityNews Halifax. CTV featured an article unsubtly noting that “Mass shootings in Canada have helped prompt changes to firearm laws over the decades.” The BC Teacher’s Union rushed out a statement condemning the “politicization” of Strang’s identity; as Tristin Hopper of the National Post, a major Canadian newspaper, noted:
The attack was literally on a BC school, and the BCTF’s first impulse is to deflect attention from a system they’ve helped enable that systematically prioritizes the gender delusions of dangerous men over basic public safety. They’re telling you they’re prepared to accept much more collateral damage.
Indeed, as much as the mainstream press would like to claim otherwise, the implementation of transgender ideology into Canadian law is very much a part of this story.
Under Bill C-4 (2022), it became illegal for young men like Strang to acquire counseling to address gender dysphoria and to become comfortable with his body; the Trudeau government claimed, absurdly, that body-affirming counseling constitutes “conversion therapy.” Several journalists pointed out that the RCMP’s inaccurate description of the shooter, while the situation was ongoing, as “female” was a “prime example of political correctness being chosen over public safety.”
