Mass Murder in a Quiet Seaside Town

"There was a witness that saw a vehicle that was travelling through a field, which was not very common."
"The gunman was a collector of many things, including police memorabilia. He was in possession of multiple pieces of police uniforms from a variety of agencies."
"How he obtained the decals and how they were produced [for his look-alike police vehicle] is an investigation detail that I can't get into."
"He didn't hide that fact that he had cars or memorabilia -- from people that knew him."
"It appeared as if he was just targeting individuals that either he knew or individuals [at random] for whatever reason."
RCMP Superintendent Darren Campbell

A number of the 22 people murdered in Nova Scotia by a psychotic local denturist.

Police received frantic 911 calls from the small seaside town of Portapique in northern Nova Scotia on April 18 just after 10 p.m. By 10:26 police were on the scene. On their way they came across a severely wounded man driving his truck on the only road out of the town of 100 residents, on his way to the nearest hospital for treatment. As they continued on after speaking to the man they were to find thirteen people dead, inside houses the killer afterward set on fire, and outside on the street. Pets belonging to those shot to death were also killed.

Portapique Beach Road represents the sole access to the main highway leading to Truro, about 90 kilometers distant. And since there was only one road, the RCMP felt confident they would find and arrest the murderer before he could escape. Only as it happened they failed to. Later, they were to learn that a resident of the town had happened to see the gunman rushing away from the area nine minutes after the police had arrived. And that someone had seen the vehicle driving through a field to evade detection, and finally reach the main highway.

'The gunman had ... left the Portapique area through a field' 
Supt. Darren Campbell outlines the timeline of the N.S. shooter's deadly rampage

In the end, the killer, Gabriel Wortman -- who over a period of roughly thirteen hours shot 22 people to death -- drove east from Portapique to Debert, Nova Scotia, arriving there at 11:12 p.m. There, he spent the night in his vehicle, parked in an industrial park. When he headed out on his killing spree he was wearing a genuine Mountie uniform, and driving a replica police car, one of four he had bought at auction over the years. The one he was driving was fitted out with an emergency light bar and decals.

In that space of thirteen hours after the first killing spree that left 13 people -- friends, neighbours, acquaintances -- dead in Portapique, the 51-year-old gunman stopped cars on the highway with the authority of his uniform and vehicle randomly selecting and killing absolute strangers, while he drove on to specific addresses of people he knew and had a grudge against, with the intention of killing them, too. He succeeded to the extent that he took 22 lives altogether. In the process severely injuring one RCMP officer and killing a second.

RCMP investigators search for evidence at the location where Const. Heidi Stevenson was killed along the highway in Shubenacadie, N.S. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)

In their many interviews with witnesses and those who had known the man, relatives of Wortman wo had retired from the RCMP were also interviewed, but could add nothing to the mystery of why a man well known in the community, with a thriving business in Halifax, would suddenly begin a killing rampage. Before he set out to murder and maim, set fire to buildings and vehicles, he had engaged in a violent confrontation with his long-time girlfriend, assaulted her, bound her in their house, before leaving.

She managed to escape to a nearby forest, injured and fearful, where she spent the night before emerging to alert police that her common-law partner was wearing a uniform and driving a police vehicle. "The word catalyst was used to express that that was the first victim in a series of very horrific events", stated Superintendent Campbell. "I want to be very clear that violence against women is intolerable. It's real. It exists. I don't want to be misunderstood, that the victim had any blame in relation to what occurred on those awful days."

Altogether, police identified 435 witnesses, and interviewed half of them, thus far in the ongoing investigation. Twenty legal applications have been processed, many among them for search warrants. Remains of eight of the victims were recovered from burned structures and vehicles. As far as investigators are concerned the motive for the horrendous slaughter is as yet unknown, and may never quite come to light.

A virtual vigil was held on Friday to mourn the 22 people killed during one of the deadliest mass killings in Canadian history. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)

COVID-19? Re-Opening Quebec

"Our challenge is to gradually restart the economy without restarting the pandemic."
"The idea is to gradually add workers and analyze the effect on the contagion."
"But one thing is clear: If we want our plan to work, we need to continue our efforts of physical distancing, and we need to continue to protect the most vulnerable."
Quebec Premier Francois Legault

"Will I be sending my kids to school [in Montreal] on May 19? No. [There are costs to reopening that include risks to children and parents, teachers and staff with pre-existing conditions, and evidence of emerging complications for kids who get COVID-19]."
"[The province has not proven itself capable of doing widespread testing for the general population and has a dismal record of contract tracing, which means] we are basically flying blind."
"And reopening in Montreal of all places? Montreal has the highest number of cases in the country."
Claire Trottier, education specialist, professor, McGill University, Department of Microbiology and Immunity

“The best option here is to send the smallest kids back to school."
"We have lots of evidence that there are bad things that happen because the kids are stuck at home, like their parents can’t work, and kids who require special services are not getting those special services."
"We have a quarter million kids in Quebec who rely on school breakfasts and are not getting those."
Epidemiologist Jay Kaufman, department of epidemiology, biostatistics and occupational health, faculty of medicine, McGill University

A mobile hospital in partnership with the Canadian Red Cross is set up in the Jacques-Lemaire Arena to help care for patients with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) from long-term centres (CHSLDs), in Montreal, Quebec, Canada April 26, 2020. Christinne Muschi / Reuter

Most Canadian provinces have fared well in their efforts to control the spread of COVID-19. British Columbia, where the epidemic first raised its ugly head, has seen declining rates of infection. Alberta appears to have SARS-CoV-2 under control but for a number of outbreaks in oil camps and poultry processing plants. Saskatchewan and Manitoba both of which have had very few numbers of COVID are preparing to reopen their economies. On Canada's Eastern shore, the COVID outbreaks have been well managed and relatively few in number.

The country's two most populous provinces -- Quebec and Ontario -- have borne the brunt of the COVID invasion, with Quebec accounting for far more cases and deaths than any other province, including Ontario. Yet it is Quebec that is preparing to reopen its schools on May 11, while Ontario takes a more cautious approach and has designated the end of May for its openings.

Canada's total number of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus to date stands at 50,000 with 3,000 deaths. Quebec's numbers are daunting, with 26,594 confirmed cases and 1,761 deaths. The death figures for Canada overall and Quebec in particular are derived in large part from the elderly and health-compromised who live and are cared for in long-term care facilities and old-age homes.

Quebec's decision to move swiftly to reopen its economy have caught other provincial governments by surprise, although at some point in May most other governments have targeted their own re-openings; reasonable enough given their lower statistics of epidemic numbers. And all are cautioning that if matters turn awry with early opening, they will swiftly revert back to the status quo.

Premier François Legault has said the province will open elementary schools and daycares outside of Montreal as of May 11 and in Montreal, Laval and Longueuil on May 19 only if it felt it is in control of the coronavirus outbreak. Paul Chiasson / THE CANADIAN PRESS

New Brunswick has had no new cases to report for the past ten days, yet it has decided to plan for a more gradual re-opening than Quebec whose latest report was 775 new cases and 83 new deaths on Tuesday alone. However, Premier Legault has announced that most retail stores will be clear to reopen on May 4. Only Montreal itself which has been hardest hit in the province, will wait another week for its re-openings on May 11.

Quebec accounts for half of the entire country's COVID-19 cases, and close to 60 percent of COVID-19 deaths, with 23 percent of the country's population base. Despite which officials have the impression that the peak of the initial wave of infections has arrived and they're now on the downward curve. Since lockdown measures were implemented, about 1.2 million Quebecers have been unemployed.

At Bombardier Inc., one of the province's largest manufacturers, manufacturing is to be gradually resumed from May 11, with its 22,000 employees expected to return to work in the next few weeks. The company is prepared to implement such precautions as daily employee temperature checks, tool disinfecting stations, installation of Plexiglas shields. "Are people concerned? It would be a lie if I said no. But the majority are happy to go back to work", said Serge Dupont, assistant to the Quebec director of Unifor.

Quebec has already allowed residential construction to resume. It plans to let the whole construction industry resume activities by the end of May. (Ivanoh Demers/Radio-Canada)

According to Jack Jedwab, president of the Association for Canadian Studies based in Montreal, part of the reason for Quebec decision-making might be accounted for given francophones appear less fearful of the virus. His organization worked with the polling firm Leger Marketing, tracking weekly public sentiment during the pandemic. The most recent round of polling found 47 percent of francophone responders fearful of acquiring the virus in comparison to 59 percent of anglophone respondents.

"I think there is also a cultural dimension to it, but you know, it's hard to measure that dimension", commented Jedwab. "Life goes on", said Premier Legault when he announced schools and nurseries would reopen. And with that re-opening, the rest of the country will be viewing what happens in Quebec over the next few weeks, and how it might pertain to their own more gradual plans for re-opening their economies.

Quebec plans to begin allowing some retail stores to open on May 4. (Ivanoh Demers/Radio-Canada )

Seeking Out all Mechanical Vulnerabilities to the Transmission of COVID-19

"We want to save lives, let's cut right to the chase."
"There are so many, many buildings ... This affects absolutely everybody. Billions of people. If we are able to cut down the transmission rate by a percent, that's a lot of people."
"This has been on people's radar for quite a while. Somebody on a different floor sneezes ... The particle can stay airborne long enough to go all the way through the [air conditioning] system and then pop out in somebody else's office." 
"While it’s not the most powerful method of transmission, it’s certainly one that makes people worry because we have a difficult time controlling it."
"People are spending most of their time indoors these days. And for places with air pollution, it’s even more important because the clear air is indoors in these highly-polluted megacities."
Professor Brian Fleck, scientific study, University of Alberta

"It is  highly likely that the SARS-CoV-2 virus also spreads by air, [requiring] all possible [action in response, including modifications in ventilation systems]."
"The fact that there are no simple methods for detecting the virus in the air does not mean that the viruses do not travel in the air."
"We predict that ... failure to immediately recognize and acknowledge the importance of airborne transmission and to take adequate actions against it will result in additional cases."
Chinese and Australian air-quality experts

"[The effort represents a] non-pharmaceutical intervention [that, if successful, could avoid] 
extensive consequences. It’s just as valuable as vaccine research."
"Improving ventilation systems in high-occupancy structures could be a critical way to contain the pandemic… This work has the potential to impact millions of people living and working in these buildings."
"[The research will unfold in three parts: a systematic review of research on air circulation and viruses, determining an effective strategy and then testing out that strategy on buildings at the Edmonton campus] to create a real-world model of what should be done."
Lexuan Zhong, engineering professor, University of Alberta

An African restaurant is closed off along with other businesses in Guangzhou's Sanyuanli area, where a neighborhood is in lockdown after several people tested positive for the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Guangdong province, China April 13, 2020. - REUTERS/David Kirton

Engineering professor Lexuan Zhong is leading a project involving the university's civil engineers funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research at the University of Alberta, consisting of three phases; systematically reviewing literature on air circulation and viruses, determining the strategies that would be effective, and finally conducting a detailed audit of all buildings on the Edmonton campus with the intention of creating a real-world model of what should be done in response to their conclusions.

Their interest in the possible role that building HVAC systems (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) may play a role in the transmission of the novel coronavirus stemmed from a case in Guangzhou, China detailed in a U.S.Centers for Disease Control online journal. Researchers had reached the conclusion that flow from an air conditioner moved over three occupied tables in the restaurant, carrying virus droplets from an infected patron at the middle table to the far table, then back to diners closer to the air conditioner.

It was a puzzle at first how eight diners at the restaurant all were infected with the coronavirus. A visitor from Wuhan, the coronavirus epicentre, suspected of being the vector had travelled to the Guangzhou region and happened to enter the restaurant. A team of local scientists came to a conclusion that tiny particles of virus had floated around on currents created by the restaurant's air conditioning, despite the prevailing view that the coronavirus is transmitted solely by heavier 'droplets'.

Now, the civil engineers at the University of Alberta have taken up the intriguing concept, one they are familiar with, hearking back to Legionnaire's Disease, a bacterial pneumonia transmitted in a hotel setting through the air conditioning system. Engineers are well acquainted with building ventilation systems as efficient distributors of viruses and other pathogens. They have set out to prove that COVID-19 falls into the same category. What now consumes their interest is conceiving of practical ways to curb infection risk; a "non-pharmaceutical" intervention.

"The HVAC system in most non-medical buildings play only a small role in infectious disease transmission, including COVID-19", responded the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-conditioning Engineers, in defence of their product and their livelihood. The smaller, lighter aerosol particles capable of spreading through a ventilation system is still questioned by some: "the truth is that we still don't really know if the (COVID-19) virus can be spread by aerosols", virus expert Matthew Miller at McMaster University responded.

However, in a paper published earlier in the month, Chinese and Australian air-quality experts basing their hypothesis partly on the SARS experience, argued in their own study that as droplets from an infected person begin evaporating, the resulting smaller particles indeed may become airborne; evidence that passengers confined to their cabins on cruise ships was cited such that they may have been infected through the air ducts of the vessels.

Canadian cases

CONFIRMED

50,015

(Today: +1,526)

DEATHS

2,859

(Today: +152)

RECOVERED

19,203

(Today: +922)

782,541 tests administered  (Today: +28,023)

Pandemic Siege - Food Insecurity

"We are going to see more nationalistic food systems and attempts at food self-sufficiency."

"But I think that's mostly political, sending signals to people that the state is actively seeking to protect them and is doing all it can to ensure food security."

"For any countries, food self-sufficiency is elusive."

Rami Zurayk, Professor, American University of Beirut

"Would some of you [newly-unemployed in Quebec] be tempted to come work with our farmers, in our fields?"

"We were worried, in the past month, that we wouldn't be able to get the fruits and vegetables we import from the south."

Quebec Premier Francois Legault, press conference

"It is a hammer blow for millions more who can only eat if they earn a wage."

"It only takes one more shock -- like COVID-19 -- to push them [insecure consumers] over the edge."

Arif Husain, senior economist, World Food Program

Vietnam, the third biggest rice exporter, has suspended contracts in the wake of the crisis. Photograph: Nguyen Huy Kham/Reuters

Like United Nations agencies and the European Union, organizations around the world agreed in a report published recently that social and political unrest world 'round is on the rise once again with the coronavirus crisis fuelling discontent in the face of food shortages, job losses and lockdowns. Normal civic life everywhere on the planet has been disrupted and peoples' fears in the face of this new reality bearing scant resemblance to what they're accustomed to, brings back haunting fears of straitened access to food sources.

In March, when the spectre of a rampant viral disease was yet in its early stages, Phil Hogan, trade chief for the European Union, had pronounced with confidence: "There is no global supply shortage at this time and such measures [as disparate nations considering curbing shipments abroad to ensure domestic supplies] are completely unjustified." By mid-April, EU trade ministers were debating how to advance the EU's "strategic autonomy", leading European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to speak of reducing dependency by "shortening and diversifying supply chains".

The world is struggling to come to grips with a once-in-a-century pandemic, while the public in disbelief views empty supermarket shelves and panic buying in wealthier countries keeps those shelves emptied even while middle class homes suddenly develop a taste for home-baked bread to allay fears of bread shortages. Ukraine, not among the wealthy nations has, as a major breadbasket, limited grain exports. The world's third-larges rice shipper, Vietnam, now bars exports of rice.

Restrictions on overseas sales of grains or rice have been introduced in about ten countries since mid-March, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) tracker. Governments are beginning to sit up and take notice. "Food is a pretty emotional topic when there is not enough of it", senior research fellow at the Washington-based IFPRI, Joseph Glauber remarked drily.

Labour supply fuels food shortage fears. Food Navigator

"Being rich is no longer a guarantee that you will be able to get the supply you want on difficult markets", observed Tim Benton, research director in emerging risks at think tank Chatham House in London. This, despite that food experts have no problem agreeing that more than enough grain is stored worldwide, along with adequate stockpiles of key food staples. It is, on the other hand, distribution networks that are causing a perceived shortfall.

Distribution bottlenecks triggered by lockdowns. But enough of a public scare has communicted to governments to influence some nations to boost their agricultural sector. The 2020 book by Tim Lang, professor of food policy at London's City University, Feeding Britain, raised the alarm that the United Kingdom's flawed system of importing vast amounts of crops has fuelled a public alarm. An increase of local food production by 2030 is visualized by Singapore which set up a task force to ensure just that.

Jakob Weyde / Shutterstock.com

Countries have been urged to keep trade flowing by a group of food industry figures, to prevent a growth in global hunger. The United Nations is urging states to work together in avoidance of "beggar-thy-neighbour policies". The former communist nations of Romania and Kazakhstan are among those that have increased grain exports in recent years, but now talk about keeping their food at home, recalling memories of food scarcity during communist rule.

When Russia, ordinarily a big grain exporter, panicked in response to harvest failures in 2010, exports became severely limited. Across Africa and Asia political and economic instability saw people struggling to cope between 2008 and 2010, leading originally to the Arab uprisings in the Middle East, which eventually led to the refugee crisis and the spread of malnutrition. Now, once again, in the face of the global pandemic Russia has halted its exports of grain.

Russia halts wheat exports, deepening fears of global food shortages, April 2019.

Harvesting wheat grains in a field of the Posevninskaya poultry farm in Cherepanovo District in September 2019.

Kirill Kukhmar–TASS/Getty Images

Social Distancing in Closed Environments

"Very early on, we wrote two letters that we posted on social media that got tonnes of attention."
"Our method of protecting ourselves and the public from being infected is social distancing. And if  you can't social distance ... you're just inviting disaster to strike."
"If you've got two people who are in a stadium and you tell them, close your eyes and just start walking around, the odds that they're going to walk into each other are pretty small. But if you have those same two people doing that in a room that's six-by-six metres, there's a pretty good chance that they're going to knock into each other. It's a simple function of the ability or the inability to distance." 
"One of the advantages we have with long-term care facilities is at least we've been able to understand some degree of the problem. Someone's peeled back the scab, so to speak, to look under the bandage and we can see how absolutely horrific what was going on has been."
"The residents in these populations, we're just going to lose them. And that's a scar upon us if we can't protect our vulnerable."
"These are not closed systems. There are people who go and work there. And if we can't protect the healthcare workers, then almost certainly we're not protecting the health-care workers' families and therefore we're not protecting the public that is in contact with the health-care worker and their families and therefore we're not going to be able to get a hold of this whole problem."
Dr.Andrew Morris, professor of medicine, University of Toronto

"I think we're starting to see very quickly that hospitals are not really the front line of this pandemic in Canada."
"I think now people are almost playing a game of catch-up when you start looking at these settings [care homes for the elderly or disabled]."
Dr.Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto

The Quebec coronor's office has launched an investigation into a long-term care home in a suburb of Montreal where 31 people have died in a conditions the premier has called "deplorable"

It has now been six weeks and ongoing, where Canadians across the country have been counselled that it is up to everyone to 'flatten the curve'. To remain sequestered in their homes, to go out only on rare occasions when it's absolutely necessary, to remain distant physically from others. Schools closed, non-essential businesses shuttered, public spaces and events off limits, borders closed, travel plans nixed. All well and good, but none of this affected long-term care homes, yet fully 78 percent of all COVID-linked deaths have occurred in long-term care homes.

All of these measures to try to control a hugely infectious and sometimes morbidly-threatening new cornavirus were predicted before the virus entered North America. Dr. Morris, for one, was alert early on that COVID-19 would present an enormous problem to Canada when it arrived, as it surely would. But even he and colleagues of his whose thoughts took a similar track, were unable to visualize just how dramatically the Canadian reality of life-normalcy would ultimately be affected.

The Eatonville Care Centre, where multiple deaths from COVID-19 have occurred, is shown in Toronto on Tuesday, April 14, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

He and his colleagues got together to draft several letters outlining the situation that would unfold and their recommendations for an early response to the situation before it became a reality. At the time it seemed so difficult to believe that the country would swiftly be engulfed in a seemingly unstoppable epidemic they scarcely thought their communications would be given the serious consideration it required. Later, it would occur to them that though that attention was forthcoming, they had themselves failed to communicate the extent of the dire conditions that would ensue.

Now that Canadians have embarked on a voyage of countradicting the basic human impulse of sociability in an effort to halt the spread of the virus causing COVID-19, the very enormity of the threat takes on new proportions to our understanding of just how vulnerable we are as a population. But it is a readily identifiable demographic of the population that has borne the brunt of the infections.

Precautions were taken to close schools and daycares to shield children from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the most readily identifiable group within any population that is given first thought. Fears of overwhelmed hospital emergencies failed to materialize, with hospital admissions and ICU capacity at not only manageable levels, but anxiously awaiting the arrivals of other emergency situations more commonly making use of those facilities that have suddenly disappeared.

People are withholding their presence at Hospital Emergencies, hoping that their worrying symptoms of heart problems, stroke, appendicitis, accidental injuries will somehow abate, rather than subject themselves to the possibility of appearing at a hospital teeming with infectious agents and find themselves infected with the dread virus. And then there is another casualty that few had given prior thought to, but several of Dr. Morris's colleagues had.

The virus that thrives in the company of groups of people in close communion, and sees its opportunities dwindling when people exercise caution to keep physical distances, found its metier when it entered the confines of closed gatherings, where people are placed in situations with tight physical spaces and an abundance of potential targets. Places like nursing homes and long-term care homes, prisons and shelters for the homeless. "Congregate settings", perfect for a virus to thrive.

If more isn’t done to protect shelters, prisons and in other so-called “congregate settings,” advocates warn more mass outbreaks are inevitable. Francis Georgian/Postmedia/File

And in long-term and nursing homes the virus has done precisely that. Shelters and prisons next on the list. "I think we're going to see numbers jump dramatically", Cathy Crowe, a nurse with decades of working with the homeless in Toronto, stated. While many shelters are attempting to implement some elements of social distancing, in their limited spaces it is beyond difficult to adequately achieve.

"It's pretty much impossible to maintain social distancing in pretty much every congregate setting of a shelter or a drop-in, to be perfectly honest", Diana McNally, with her years working in Toronto shelters, offered. "The diagnostic differentiation of COVID among people experiencing homelessness is very challenging", Dr. Naheed Dossani, palliative care physician who often works with the homeless, pointed out.

In prisons and jails outbreaks are beginning to occur. "I'm speaking to senior citizens who are serving prison sentences and telling me, I didn't know this was going to be a death sentence", Paul Champ, a lawyer in Ottawa stated. As for long-term care homes where well over fifty percent of the COVID deaths not only in Canada but globally, have been taking place, the sheer vulnerability of the aged, infirm and health-compromised has shocked the world.

As the coronavirus outbreak continues, Los Angeles has been providing unhoused people with motorhomes and RVs, which allow them to maintain social distance.  Photograph: APU GOMES/Getty Images

Nova Scotia's Tragedy : A Psychopath on the Loose

"This is by far the worst case I have ever heard of in Canadian history. The whole scenario: the police car, the police uniform, the indiscriminate and targeted shooting of subjects, the number of bodies, the number of crime scenes, it's unheard of."
"I would not expect perfection out of the police response in a case like this because there's nothing that can train you for something like it."
"Darkness, fires, an armed man and you don't know where he is, it adds to the complexity level over 100 percent. You can't just blindly send officers running in to find the suspect. Setting up the perimeter and containment was the absolute right course at that particular time, and it's just unfortunate that he escaped either before or some time after they set it up."
"Mass shootings just don't happen in these [rural] areas. So the police are suddenly confronted with something they have likely never experienced in their life."
"So the first thing you do is set up a perimeter and focus on containment, bringing in additional resources and then you start a methodical search of the area."
David Perry, CEO, Investigative Solutions Network

"I'm sure everyone could imagine what that scene looked like. Multiple victims, multiple structure fires. [They -- police responders -- thought it was a]  localized incident [that the killer was in the] heavily locked down [area]."
"We hear the families of the victims full force. They have every right to ask these questions and they have every right to be angry."
"To call this a tragedy would be an understatement."
RCMP Superintendent Darren Campbell

Police block the highway in Debert, N.S. on Sunday after a man disguised as a police officer went on a shooting rampage. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)

David Perry, a former detective sergeant with the Toronto Police Services, who in that capacity before resigning from the Force was behind the initiative to launch the first Amber Alert in Ontario in 2003, felt the RCMP certainly should have used an emergency alert in warning to residents of the Portapique-and-beyond geographic area -- to cover all of Nova Scotia -- of the dangerous presence of a mass killer, advising people to remain in their homes for personal safety until such time as the suspect would be taken into custody.

The large perimeter that the RCMP was focused on in an effort to contain the presence of the murderer of at-that-time 13 people in and around the rural Portapique community of 100 permanent residents began at 10:25 p.m. following the discovery of the 13 shooting victims (some injured, most dead) at eight locations and faced with the extenuated simultaneous circumstances of multiple buildings on fire. A chaotic scene altogether, it was even thought the killer might have killed himself.

Darcy Sack, a Shubenacadie, N.S., resident, said she and her friend came across two burning police vehicles and the silver suspect vehicle while out driving on Sunday morning near Highway 102

No such thing, but it was a while before police fully understood that the killer, identified swiftly as Gabriel Wortman, had made good his escape, going on to travel 43 kilometres north wearing a police uniform and driving a look-alike RCMP vehicle. In the horrifying hours to come he would succeed in killing another 12 people. Failure to use the province's Emergency Measure Operation province-wide emergency alert represented a startling lack of decision-making.

The decision to use Twitter and Facebook was an ill-considered measure in alerting a vulnerable population. The first police to respond to the 911 call of an active shooter in Portapique came across a man driving the opposite way out of the only road connecting the community from the highway on his way to hospital. Bleeding from a gunshot wound, he informed the police that a police car driving in the other direction had fired at him; the shooter a middle-aged white man wearing an RCMP uniform.

At some point while police were setting up the perimeter around Portapique the killer had left the area to drive across northern Nova Scotia to reach properties of people known to him and whom he planned to kill. At one house the occupants saw him on arrival carrying a firearm and failed to respond when he banged on their door. On another occasion, shooting to death a couple and their daughter, he also shot to death an elderly man who had seen their house on fire and meant to offer help.

The raging psychopath saw a woman walking along the road with her dog, and shot her to death. He pulled two strangers over in his replica police car and shot each to death on two separate occasions on the highway, burning one vehicle and commandeering the other, torching his police car. A raging pyromaniac as well as a mass murderer, he had set seven buildings, mostly homes, on fire throughout his rampage.

RCMP are shown near a gas station in Enfield, N.S., shortly after the gunman's police chase came to an end around 11:40 a.m. local time. (Eric Woolliscroft/CBC)

Police called in backup inclusive of dogs, tactical officers, helicopters, negotiators, but failed to send out an emergency Orange Alert, vacillating over various drafts while Emergency Services several times urged them to send out an Orange Alert. Had people been advised, they might have stood a better chance protecting themselves from the death that stalked them. Sunday morning north of Portapique in Wentworth, a couple known to Wortman became his victims.

By the time he had racked up 19 people dead, as he drove along the highway, he saw an RCMP constable parked, awaiting the arrival of another constable he had arranged to meet. Constable Chad Morrison, parked in Shubenacadie between the cities of Halifax and Truro, was shot when Wortman pulled alongside. Severely injured, Constable Morrison headed out to a hospital for emergency care, radioing dispatch. He survived the massacre.

But Constable Heidi Stevenson, driving to the arranged destination to meet up with Constable Morrison, did not. As Wortman, still driving that look-alike police car began to approach, he rammed her car, and though Constable Stevenson responded, to engage her attacker he shot her to death. Then  he headed south to another home on Highway 224 to kill a woman he knew, and took her car, a red Mazda.

A person with the name Gabriel Wortman is listed as a denturist in the Halifax area on the Denturist Society of Nova Scotia website. He is listed as the owner of this property in Dartmouth, where police were Sunday afternoon. (Eric Woolliscroft/CBC)

He headed south to Halifax where his permanent home and his denturist business was located, but stopped at an Irving Big Stop gas station close by the Halifax airport. Two RCMP officers in a police tactical resources vehicle by chance happened to stop for gas as well. Realizing that they were in close presence to a man sought for mass murder in the province, they confronted him and one officer shot him dead.

A couple place a flag at a memorial for shooting victims in Portapique, Nova Scotia on April 22, 2020.

Andrew Vaughanmdash;AP

Absent Warning, Victims Died

"I could see a body laying on the side of the road. As I got closer, I could see it was my brother. I got one more step closer and I could see blood and he wasn't moving."
"I shut my flashlight off. I turned around and I ran for my life in the dark. I went up the first cottage road ... I turned around and looked down towards the road I had just run from to see a little flashlight flashing around looking for me."
Clinton Ellison, Portapique, Nova Scotia

"The more time you wait to give an answer, the more difficult it is to explain why you didn't use the dedicated alert system."
"And it's taken too long for them [RCMP] to provide answers."
"I think in order to gain the trust of the public they need to explain why they didn't use the system and be transparent about it."
"They need to ultimately take the fault for that."
Yannick Hemond, risk management specialist, professor, Universite du Quebec a Montreal

"Somewhere, somehow, they hit a wall."
"It would have been helpful yesterday if someone had said: 'We certainly could have done better'."
"It's important for leadership to recognize that more could have been done."
Terry Flynn, crisis and risk communications expert, McMaster University

"Some are asking questions about difficult senior operational decisions, without considering how little information is available to our first responders on the ground protecting the public in the middle of a rapidly evolving and highly dangerous crisis."
"Early speculation in advance of the investigation findings damages the morale of the brave men and women who responded to this situation, and who are grieving the loss of their colleague and community members."
Brian Sauve, president, National Police Federation

"The original call to the RCMP was to one of our members at headquarters. There was then a series of phone calls that had to be made to find the officer in charge, then speak to the incident commander, have a conversation about the issuing of a message."
"So a lot of the delay was based on communications between the EMO and the various officers. And then a discussion about how the message could be constructed and what it would say. In that hour and a bit of consultation, the subject was killed."
Nova Scotia RCMP Chief Supt.Chris Leather 

Care worker and first responder Alicia Cunningham looks at a makeshift memorial for RCMP Constable Heidi Stevenson, in Shubenacadie, N.S., on April 22, 2020.

Nothing, no explanations, no prevarications change the fact that a dreadful situation was unfolding where a psychotic killer, armed and raging, went about sacking and killing and injuring people undeterred in his killing lunacy targeting neighbours, friends, acquaintances, strangers. This was no sudden act of impetuous temporary insanity, but a well-thought-out act of vengeance for reasons yet unknown by a man within whom a sense of personal outrage had long simmered.

He had assembled a personal armoury of a variety of lethal weapons. A collector of old decommissioned police vehicles had him registering several and having one of them restored to emulate a current model with all requisite markings. From some source he acquired a genuine RCMP uniform. The murderous rampage he set out on was unstoppable and horrendous, leading to the deaths of 22 innocent people. From Saturday night to Sunday noon he tracked and hunted his victims.

Police block the highway in Enfield, N.S. on Sunday, April 19, 2020.  THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

Some just happened to wander either on foot or in vehicles into his line of operation as he travelled the 100 kilometres from Portapique the seaside rural town where everyone knew everyone else to nearby the city of Truro, maiming and killing people as he went. The RCMP resorted to posting several Tweets, and an alert on Facebook, but though the province's Emergency Measures Organization asked that an red alert go out, it ran into a bureaucratic hold-up.

A simple alert that would warn residents of the area to remain at home while a hunt for a mass killer was underway would have been sufficient to decrease the total number of victims. The alert would have been sent to cellphones and would appear on television screens. But high-level bureaucracy was more invested in a series of drafts to assure wording satisfactory to RCMP standards held to be more important than warning a vulnerable public.

Nothing might have prevented the first seven deaths of those attending a  house party that the killer and his girlfriend had been at before he returned and unleashed his killing agenda. Attending RCMP officers found at that scene in response to 911 calls "multiple casualties" inside and outside of the party house, the shooter gone. That first Twitter message asked people to remain within their homes, a message received by some of the RCMP's Twitter followers.

An RCMP investigator inspects vehicles destroyed by fire at the residence of Alanna Jenkins and Sean McLeod, both corrections officers, in Wentworth Centre, N.S. on Monday, April 20, 2020. A neighbour, Tom Bagley, was also killed on the property. Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press

Gabriel Wortman, 51, well known to the villagers, continued his rampage dressed in an RCMP uniform, driving a replica RCMP vehicle. He entered homes, killed residents, set the homes on fire. Returning to his cottage where he had left his girlfriend tied up to find she had escaped, he set that house on fire along with his collection of vehicles. More burned vehicles would follow during his 13-hour frenzy of death-dealing. There were, altogether, 16 separate crime scenes to account for the 22 people he murdered.

Eventually, nearing mid-day on Sunday, two RCMP constables stopping for gas, happened to come across the killer driving a vehicle taken from another of his victims. And unlike his run-ins with two other RCMP officers driving police vehicles, where he shot and seriously injured one and continued driving to come across another whose vehicle he rammed, then shot to death the woman officer with 23 years' experience in the Force, this time it was he who was shot and killed by two other RCMP.

RCMP investigators search for evidence at the location where Const. Heidi Stevenson was killed along the highway in Shubenacadie, N.S. on Thursday, April 23, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

Maintiens le Droit [Fr, "Uphold the Right"

"[The province's Emergency Management Office] had reached out a number of times throughout the morning to the RCMP [asking for a message to be sent out as an alert]."
Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil

RCMP Chief Superintendent Chris Leather Riley Smith/The Canadian Press

"We were in the process of preparing an alert when the gunman was shot and killed by the RCMP."
"From that initial call, our response was dynamic and fluid, with members using their training to assess what was going on while encountering the unimaginable."
"The original call to the RCMP was to one of our members at headquarters. There was then a series of phone calls that had to be made to find the officer in charge, then speak to the incident commander, have a conversation about the issuing of a message. So a lot of the delay was based on communication between the EMO and the various officers."
"And then a discussion about how the message would be constructed and what it would say. In that hour and a bit of consultation, the subject [Wortman] was killed."
"I would like nothing more than to provide the media and the public with a timeline [of events]. But it literally is still a work in progress [ongoing investigation]. It would be unfair and inappropriate for us to give that out in its current state. [We are still] piecing together the movements [of the gunman]."
Nova Scotia RCMP Chief Supt.Chris Leather

"We can confirm that around 10:30 a.m. there was gunfire at our hall and the gunfire caused considerable damage to our property, including taking one of our trucks out of service."
Onslow Belmont Fire Brigade hall

"They [two young sons of Greg and Jamie Blair] hid in the house until he [the killer] was gone and then they took off to the neighbour's house and hid inside with their two little kids next door until the cops came."
Tyler Blair, Portapique, Nova Scotia

"I knew from the gunshots I heard earlier, something was really wrong and I turned and ran for my life [after discovering his brother's dead body]."
"I'll be traumatized for the rest of my life. I'm having a really hard time with it. [I ran then lay in the woods for four hours] freezing to death [after seeing a flashlight beam pursuing him on the road]."
Clinton Ellison, Portapique, Nova Scotia

RCMP members pack up after the search for Gabriel Wortman in Great Village, Nova Scotia, Canada April 19, 2020. "We have to ensure that whatever happened there, there’s always going to be a better way to do things” source=””

Event:  Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are investigating an active shooter event in Portapique, Nova Scotia, on Sunday, April 19. The public is asked to avoid Portapique Beach Road, Bay Shore Road, Five Houses Road, and the surrounding areas and stay in their homes with doors locked at this time for their safety.  Please follow instructions from local authorities and monitor local media for updates.
Security Alert - U.S.Consulate General, Halifax, Canada, April 19, 2020 

The bureaucrats at the RCMP division in Nova Scotia evidently spent 14 hours working on various draft alerts to go out as a 'red alert' to the public, over a killer on the loose. A killer who left 16 crime scenes, 5 buildings burnt to the ground, several vehicles torched, and 22 dead bodies behind him as he made his way driving through rural communities from seaside Portapique with its 200 residents on to Truro over a 13-hour murder rampage.

As the situation was unfolding, out of Halifax, the U.S.Consulate-General issued an alert of its own, to its U.S.constituency. This, while the RCMP vacillated, engaged in communication glitches, sent out two Twitter alerts to their 100,000 followers, along with a Facebook notice, and failed to issue an emergency alert message that would be transmitted to all cellular phones and television stations throughout the province with the use of a Ready Alert system.

The government's own Emergency Management Office had requested the RCMP to do so on Sunday morning. It was on Saturday evening at around 10:26 pm that the first call for a "possible shooting" in rural Portapique came through to the RCMP and the first of the weekend's murders was discovered. Multiple requests came from the provincial government for an emergency alert message. In the end, the issue solved itself when the force was finally prepared to issue the message only to discover that the mass killer had been apprehended. Shot dead, actually, just before noon.

Most people in the area had no idea that something was happening that could morbidly impact on their lives. Area residents went about their business as usual, with no inkling that they should be sheltering in their homes, because no alert had been issued, although one had been issued a week earlier reminding residents that despite the Easter holidays, a COVID-19 lockdown was in effect. Warned about one stealth killer, but not another.

One woman, a frequent trail-walker, went out with her dog as usual for a walk through nearby forest trails. In her absence, a neighbour, aware of her dedication to walking in the forest, and knowing the situation was dire, called to warn her, but it was too late, she was already out, and became a target for the killing rage of the murderer. And nor was she the only person who met death at the hands of a psychotic killer that day or the next. A man who killed friends, neighbours and strangers with no compunction, from retirees to newlyweds, to long-marrieds, to a teenager killed along with her parents.

With the use of a lookalike RCMP vehicle and a genuine RCMP uniform people seeing him would never have guessed that he was not a protector of the public. RCMP were alerted to his guise by his girlfriend who had been assaulted by him in his cottage after an argument while they were at a social gathering. He had tied her up, left the cottage to begin his murder spree by returning to the social event and shooting dead several acquaintances there before moving on to enter homes and deal in death.

"I feel strongly about that. I do feel if we had received an alert, an Amber Alert, we've had COVID-19 alerts ... then many people might have been spared", said Heather Matthews, a long-time friend of Lillian Hyslop the woman who had gone out for a walk with her dog, innocent of the knowledge that a killer stalked the area.

The Authentic Self-Obsessed Trudeau

 Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, 2017. Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

"I was extremely disappointed with Justin and felt really bad for Shinzo Abe. He'd put so much into the TPP-11 [Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement] and this was a very public humiliation."
"Likewise for Prime Minister [Nguyen Xuan] Phuc of Vietnam. He had dozens of cameras waiting to record the historic moment, and then it hadn't happened."
"This last minute backflip looked flaky. Had I misjudged him [thinking there was substance in Justin Trudeau behind the mask of flippant juvenile egocentricity that most world leaders attributed to  him]?"
"What, Justin, is going on? You have just humiliated our friend Shinzo, who happens to be the leader of the third largest national economy in the world."
"And, if that wasn't enough, you have humiliated our host, Prime Minister Phuc."
"Justin always wore perfectly tailored suits that fitted like a glove, bright socks and on this occasion two-tone shoes. 'What do  you think of the socks?' he asked, crossing his legs as he sat down. 'Justin', I said, 'we're not here to talk about  your socks'."
Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, autobiography A Bigger Picture

It was a critical meeting, a wrap of the negotiations between the government leaders participating in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement -- after its largest prospective partner, the United States, had pulled out as a living example of President Donald Trump's contempt for trade agreements -- where all the leaders were under the impression that everyone had agreed to the terms and conditions making up the agreement and all that was left was the ceremonious signing of the agreement at which point they could all congratulate one another, celebrate, and issue the obligatory public relations photos.

The empty seat, foreground, for Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is seen during a meeting of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Danang, Vietnam, Friday, Friday, Nov. 10, 2017. Efforts to reach an agreement this weekend on a Pacific Rim trade pact appeared to collapse Friday when persistent concerns over the deal, including Canada's, forced the abrupt cancellation of a scheduled leaders' meeting. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AAP Image via AP-Mick Tsikas

That good-news scenario concluding a long-awaited, hard-bargained agreement just fell flat. Two of the leaders were missing, and no one knew where they were, but matters could not proceed in their absence so the assembled leaders stewed, wondered, and waited. Until Japan's Shinzo Abe turned up. And as Turnbull describes the scenario, as Abe strode into the meeting looking "very flustered" he responded when asked what was happening: "Justin won't sign. He's pulling out."

Justin Trudeau his trademark of flamboyant socks. This time during a meeting with the Irish PM. in May 2017 (Paull Chiasson-CP)

A typically theatrical Trudeau pout. And Turnbull enquired of Abe, was Trudeau attempting to scuttle the deal, to which Abe responded, yes, exactly what he was thinking. The other leaders had "bent over backwards" for Canada's leader throughout the negotiations. Any such negotiations on the world scene involving Justin Trudeau typically came packed with demands that such considerations as feminism, environment, aboriginals and labour laws must be included. It's how Justin-the-Woke scuttled the free trade agreement he was anxious to sign with China that fell through.

So, thought Turnbull at this turn of events, Trudeau after all hadn't been unfairly cast as a "lightweight" by those critical of his histrionics and referential 'sunny ways', brightly declaring as he took his place among other world leaders post-election that under yet another Trudeau "Canada is back!" Truth is, the juvenile thespian in Justin Trudeau never humiliates him no matter what the theatre of play, the performance of the day, or the inconvenience of display.

It is the Canadian public and Canada itself that is humiliated. His casual disregard of ethics, justice and letter of the law as it regards his behaviour is always self-justifiable, he is that complacent and self-assured of his perfection.

Malcolm Turnbull (L) and Justin Trudeau.. (CBC)

Turnbull, acting the kindly mentor to an impetuous, ignorant young man who by some distortion of historical measure, had inherited the mantle of prime minister on the basis of his family name and his father's chequered stewardship of Canadian interests, displayed patience and a willingness to overlook some elements of a new leader's obvious lack of leadership qualities. Trudeau's non-committal attitude after a long and laborious period of negotiations left the other ten world leaders with the impression that Canada should be written out of the agreement.

Confiding in Turnbull, then-Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto observed his belief that Trudeau had "lacked the strength to say 'no' months ago and now lacked the strength to say 'yes'." Followed by Japan's Abe's determination to forge on and  hammer out a solution: "We have to keep the train moving, we can't stop. If Canada won't come, make it a TPP-10", Turnbull advised Abe, rather than the TPP-11, following the refusal of its 12th member, the U.S., to be included.

That led to a Japanese negotiator writing up and presentng for consideration two draft press releases highlighting the agreement; one excluding and one including Canada: "right now, we are pretty indifferent as to which one we issue". And then, days later, at a World Economic Forum in Davos, Trudeau announced that Canada was back in TPP-11.

Turnbull, top row centre, kept up appearances with Trudeau as they took their places for the leaders' photograph at the APEC Summit in Danang, Vietnam in November 2017. (Adrian Wyld/CP)