One mother described mental health services in Tumbler Ridge as inconsistent, with clinicians spread thin and availabilities often cancelled because of weather and other disruptions.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
The mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge has laid bare long-standing gaps in mental health care in rural northern B.C., where residents say access was limited long before the tragedy and are asking whether stronger supports might have made a difference.
In the days after the Feb. 10 shooting, the province deployed many mental health resources to the remote mining community to support residents reeling from grief. These included a children’s psychiatrist, about 10 mental health clinicians, victim services workers and support dogs.
But locals describe the community prior to the shooting as a mental health desert, where specialists were hundreds of kilometres away and available only after long waits. A recent BC Medical Journal article notes that rural residents experience worse mental health outcomes than their urban counterparts, while coping with limited services, resource-driven economic instability and reduced privacy in small-town settings.
“It’s one thing that we know, as elected officials in our community – that we are short on the mental health, counselling,” Tumbler Ridge Mayor Darryl Krakowka told reporters the day after the shooting.
On Tuesday, Jatinder Baidwan, B.C.’s chief coroner, announced an inquest into the deaths that will examine, among other things, access to mental health supports and services in rural and remote B.C., including crisis intervention and wraparound care.
A woman visits a makeshift memorial on the steps of the Tumbler Ridge town hall, four days after one of the worst mass shootings in recent Canadian history.Jennfier Gauthier/Reuters
The shooter, Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, fatally shot eight people, including six children, before turning a gun on herself. Family members and police say she lived with extensive mental health issues and had previously been apprehended under the Mental Health Act, which allows involuntary intervention when someone is believed to pose a risk to themselves or others.
Her maternal grandparents, Adell and Russell Strang, told The Globe and Mail that she had high-functioning autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, deep depression and ADHD, and that the family tried for years to get her help.
As well, Ms. Van Rootselaar, who was born male and began a gender transition six years ago, posted online at age 16 about living in a rural community, being on a six-month wait list to see a specialist in Prince George and feeling anguish over delays in receiving hormone replacement therapy.
“There were cancelled appointments, gaps in care and treatments that were difficult and traumatic, including forced interventions such as ECT,” her grandparents said, referring to electroconvulsive therapy.
“We trusted that the system in place would provide the sustainable support Jesse needed. From our perspective, the system failed us and Jesse.”
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Northern Health, the health authority for the region, told The Globe that it cannot comment on an individual’s treatment history, but noted that, prior to the shooting, a child youth and mental health clinician based in Dawson Creek had provided alternating in-person and virtual supports in Tumbler Ridge. A multidisciplinary youth mental health and addictions team also visited once a week.
Inpatient services elsewhere in the region are determined by patient need, the health authority said.
Data cited in the BC Medical Journal show stark regional disparities. In 2022-23, the province’s northeast region had 5.3 psychiatrists for every 100,000 residents, compared with 43.1 in Vancouver, and 1.3 pediatricians for every 100,000 residents, compared with 14.6 in Vancouver.
The Globe spoke with a Tumbler Ridge mother with extensive experience navigating mental health services for her children, including one who, the mother says, spent time receiving psychiatric care alongside Ms. Van Rootselaar in Prince George.
The mother described the weekly service in Tumbler Ridge as inconsistent, with clinicians spread thin and availabilities often cancelled because of weather and other disruptions. It took years for her children to receive behavioural assessments and diagnoses, and in-classroom and community supports were almost non-existent, she said.
The BC Teachers' Federation is calling for one mental health counsellor in every school – something B.C.’s NDP government pledged leading up to the 2024 election.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
The Globe is not naming the mother because of safety concerns about speaking out in her small community.
When one child expressed thoughts of self-harm, the mother brought the child to the Tumbler Ridge Health Centre, where staff said more intensive care was needed. The child was then sent to Dawson Creek, and waited three days in an emergency department before being transferred to Prince George for one week of crisis stabilization at an adolescent psychiatric centre.
Longer-term, in-patient treatment involved a one-year wait and a trip hundreds of kilometres south to B.C.’s Lower Mainland. Another child required three-hour round-trip drives to see a behaviour specialist in Dawson Creek every week or two, she said.
In B.C., students with greater needs can undergo an evaluation by a school psychologist to receive what’s called a designation, which can open the door to funding for additional supports. But long waiting lists mean many students are never assessed, according to parents and the provincial teachers union.
The Tumbler Ridge mother said she was only able to get a “Category H” designation – for students requiring intensive behaviour intervention or living with serious mental illness – after the school district accepted documentation from a pediatrician outlining her child’s needs.
B.C. Chief Coroner Dr. Jatinder Baidwan has called an inquest into the deaths of nine people in Tumbler Ridge. He says the inquest will examine how mental health and the public safety systems intersect.
The Canadian Press
That triggered supplemental provincial funding for up to one hour per day with an education assistant. But because funding flows to school districts and not individual students, her child was allocated only 15 minutes of one-on-one support.
(The shooter was not a student at the time of the shooting, having dropped out four years earlier, police said.)
The BC Teachers’ Federation says the province has for years underfunded supports for students with disabilities and diverse needs, most recently covering 76 per cent of what school districts spent to provide the support in 2024-25.
“School districts have to make really difficult decisions about how to meet those needs,” BCTF president Carole Gordon said in an interview. “When you have limited psychologists and budget constraints, often schools are told, ‘You can get three assessments done this year; that’s all we have the budget for,’ for example.”
The union is calling for one mental health counsellor in every school – something B.C.’s NDP government pledged leading up to the 2024 election. (The province says it continues to work toward the commitment.)
Residents embrace each other as they place flowers at a memorial for the shooting victims.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
The Canadian Mental Health Association’s B.C. division has also urged earlier intervention, noting the provincial budget announced in February commits $131-million to involuntary treatment – “the most expensive form of mental health care possible,” for people in acute crisis – and called it a missed opportunity to expand community-based supports.
“Without growing public investment, people will delay or forgo care until they reach crisis — at far greater human and financial cost,” chief executive officer Jonny Morris said in a statement.
In an interview, Mr. Morris said that while virtual options have improved specialist access in rural and remote regions such as Tumbler Ridge, the amount of care that is available in one’s community “can often feel like it’s driven by your postal code.”
He also cautioned against linking mental illness and violence, calling it an oversimplification that can fuel stigma while obscuring complex contributing factors such as social isolation and childhood exposure to violence.
Mr. Morris pointed to the Mass Casualty Commission’s report into the 2020 Nova Scotia mass shooting and said it underscores the need for increased and sustained mental health supports in Tumbler Ridge after the shooting.
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The public inquiry noted that traumatic loss can result in complicated grief and mental injuries such as post-traumatic stress disorder, sometimes persisting for years, requiring sustained financial, material, educational and health care supports.
Reached for comment, B.C.’s Ministry of Health cited youth mental health investments including increasing its Foundry network of youth health services to 35 locations in coming years, with sites in rural communities such as Fort St. John, a two-hour drive from Tumbler Ridge.
It also plans to hire more specialists for its Early Psychosis Intervention program, which has more than 50 locations, including Dawson Creek and Fort St. John.
The Dawson Creek Hospital replacement, expected to open next year, will add three in-patient psychiatric beds, bringing the total to 18, the province said. And a new acute care tower at the University Hospital of Northern B.C. in Prince George, expected to be complete in 2031, will increase mental health and substance use beds to 83, from 40.
Jennfier Gauthier/Reuters