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Todd Whitcombe: Frequency of mass murders rising in Canada

Each time, there are cries for reform. And each time spouses, parents, brothers, sisters, children, loved ones are left to grieve with few answers and no one accountable.
Todd Whitcombe
saskatchewan victims (002)
Photos of the 10 people killed in a Labour Day weekend stabbing rampage in Saskatchewan. (From L to R: Lydia Gloria Burns, Lana Head, Gregory Burns, Christian Head, Carol Burns, Bonnie Burns, Thomas Burns, Robert Sanderson, Wesley Petterson). Photo/RCMP

This past week saw another mass shooting in the United States. And if you think about that sentence, it is ludicrous. How can these incidents keep happening?

Yet mass shootings south of the border have become routine. Five dead and 26 injured makes a splash in the news cycle but quickly fades from the public conscience. After all, there have been 23 shootings this year. What is one more?

Uvalde, Texas, saw 22 killed – 19 children – and 18 injured in a school shooting on May 24th. Highland Park saw seven killed and 48 injured during a Fourth of July parade. Over 90 mass shootings in the past five years.

Each time, there are cries for reform. And each time spouses, parents, brothers, sisters, children, loved ones are left to grieve with few answers and no one accountable.

We are fortunate in Canada. We haven’t seen as many incidents. This is due to many factors, such as the fact we don’t have an inalienable right to carry firearms, stricter gun laws and we were not born out of revolution against the British crown. We also don’t have as many overcrowded cities. And, generally, Canadians respect one another.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t see mass killings.

Since 1900, there have been 16 incidences. Not all were shootings but all were targeted mass murders. What is troubling and alarming is that of those 16, five have occurred in the past five years.

In a Quebec City mosque, six were killed and 19 injured on January 29, 2017. On April 23, 2018, a driver killed 11 and injured at least 15 more victims in Toronto. Twenty-two victims were killed and three injured in Nova Scotia in 2020. In 2021, a driver ran down a family of four and injured one other in London, Ontario. And this year, 10 victims were killed and 18 injured in Saskatchewan.

Dec. 6, 1989, marked one of the worst shootings in Canadian history. Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte, and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz should not have died and 11 others should not have been injured at Ecole Polytechnique simply because they were women.

Todd Whitcombe is a chemistry professor at UNBC.