Wendy Trueit, the co-owner of Twisted Seasons Bistro in Tumbler Ridge, spent the days after the shooting on her feet, alongside the cafe’s other staff, keeping everyone who entered supplied with the caffeine and snacks necessary for them to keep going.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
The federal politicians have gone and so have the TV cameras. With the glare of the international spotlight beginning to shift away from Tumbler Ridge, many residents are finally finding a chance to breathe, and to grieve.
When unimaginable horror struck this small northern British Columbia mining town last Tuesday, no one was prepared for the flood of people it would bring.
As news spread of a mass shooting at the local secondary school and a residence in the town, dozens of reporters flew in, along with investigators, coroners, additional police officers and representatives from the federal and provincial governments. Around two dozen volunteers from an evangelical church arrived and set up a large black motor home offering prayer services in a parking lot in the centre of town.
So many people came to Tumbler Ridge in the aftermath of the shooting that restaurants were overwhelmed. Hotels filled up. Everyone needed to be fed and housed. On Friday, the front-desk clerk at a local hotel said he hadn’t slept in days, just trying to keep up with demand.
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Wendy Trueit, co-owner of the town’s Twisted Seasons bistro, agreed that it had been an insanely busy time. “It’s been heartbreaking. Heartwarming. There’s so many different words to describe it.”
The intensity of news coverage reached a crescendo Friday night, with a public vigil attended by Prime Minister Mark Carney, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, Governor-General Mary Simon and many other dignitaries.
The town hall was surrounded by people. It appeared nearly every one of the town’s 2,400 residents was there, wrapped around the red building’s front steps and standing inside an arc of wooden barricades with signs reading “Tumbler Ridge residents only past this point.”
As difficult as all the attention has been, Ms. Trueit said it has also helped the community, and support has poured in from all corners. She said mass shooting survivors from Connecticut reached out with donations and guidance.
“Knowing that’s happening is helping everybody move forward,” she said. The shooting has “not just affected Tumbler Ridge, it’s affected the world.”
Heather Kohler delivers fresh flowers to the local grocery store in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., because they ran out of inventory as memorials grew quickly. Kohler has been running supplies between the town and the nearby community of Dawson Creek, part of a network of volunteers who are trying to help.JESSE WINTER/The Globe and Mail
As the tragedy’s immediate shock has subsided, so have the media’s demands for attention.
By Saturday morning, the town centre was quiet. The news crews were mostly gone, and the community slowly began the process of finding some sort of normalcy. There also appeared to be a sense of relief. People carried themselves more lightly, and hugged each other on the street more freely, not first checking over their shoulders.
At a local lunch spot on Saturday, RCMP officers came and went alongside restaurant staff and local residents, co-ordinating food drop-offs but also taking time to hug, and cry, and say “I love you.”
The Twisted Seasons cafe sits just down the street from the health centre where shooting victims were triaged. It’s also directly across from a spruce tree that became an impromptu memorial, ringed with flowers, teddy bears and letters of condolence. Because of its location, Twisted Seasons became a kind of home base for many out-of-town journalists, RCMP and other emergency responders.
Ms. Trueit spent the days after the shooting run off her feet, alongside the cafe’s other staff, keeping everyone who entered supplied with the caffeine and snacks necessary for them to keep going. The cafe took in more than $5,000 worth of donations — many in the form of online food orders for small items, such as a coffee that came with a $100 tip. And they turned those donations around within hours, sending out food to the families of the victims and to first responders.
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Ms. Trueit also doled out innumerable hugs to everyone who looked like they needed them, including reporters.
Like nearly everyone in Tumbler Ridge, Ms. Trueit was touched directly by the tragedy. Her grandkids were in the school when the shooting started.
And also like everyone, Ms. Trueit had not expected the demands for time, food and attention that would land so forcefully on her town. But she was unusually prepared for it. She’d suffered a string of personal tragedies in her own life in recent years, including the death of an adult son.
Surviving those losses gave her the strength to support others around her as news of the town’s tragedy made headlines across the globe, she said.
Seventeen-year-old Duncan Mckay was also working at the cafe this week, despite fleeing from the shooter’s bullets himself on Tuesday. Mr. Mckay had been in the school when the gunshots rang out. Several of them nearly killed his teacher. He’d sheltered in the gymnasium equipment room, working with other senior students to help comfort the younger ones as the shooter roamed the hallways.
Duncan McKay was in gym class at Tumbler Ridge High School when he first heard gunshots. The 17-year-old student recounts what he saw and heard during the mass shooting as he, fellow students and a teacher hid in an equipment room.
And just days later, he gave five media interviews in the space of two hours, all inside Twisted Seasons, laying out for the world what he’d witnessed and the impact it had.
Mr. Mckay said talking about it has helped. So has working at the coffee shop.
“I’ve been keeping busy,” he said, “and doing better than I was right after. I’m less shaken up, realizing that this actually happened. That it wasn’t a dream.”
After what seemed like endless tragic news, on Saturday there was a glimmer of hope. David Gebala, the father of 12-year-old Maya Gebala, who was gravely wounded in the shooting, posted an “encouraging” update on Facebook. Maya had “started attempting to initiate her own breaths, which is truly incredible,” Mr. Gebala wrote. “The nurse also noted a slight dilation in her eye. These are all very positive signs and show that she’s moving in the right direction.”
As the last reporters left town, and political staff made plans to leave, Ms. Trueit said the whole community is getting more space to begin the process of returning to everyday routines and, for the families of the victims, to lives that are forever changed.
“These families never will get over it, but they will get through it,” Ms. Trueit said.
Exactly what that normalcy looks like is yet unknown. At the Friday night vigil, B.C. Premier David Eby promised that no student would have to set foot inside the local high school who didn’t want to. Further details on where and how high school in Tumbler Ridge will resume are expected next week.
In the meantime, Monday in B.C. is the Family Day winter holiday. The town’s community centre will be open free of charge to every resident, including for swimming, curling and skating. Ms. Trueit said she heard someone is organizing a memorial hike. “We’re a very physically active community,” she said.
She plans to take Monday off before going back to making coffee, assembling sandwiches and taking meal orders. She’s been coping by making sure everyone around her is taken care of.
“And when they’re all okay, that’s when I’ll sit down and I’ll have my moment,” she said.