Tumbler Ridge massacre just an excuse to bash trans folk, says activist

"Let's not politicize this," said politicians of all stripes as they cried on cue for the victims of Tuesday's school shooting at Tumbler Ridge BC that left nine people dead, including the killer, and 27 injured.

Among those weeping was Marni Panas, a "trans activist" based in Edmonton, who says her heart broke when she saw the news. When rumours (confirmed much later by the RCMP)  began to circulate that the suspect, at first described as "a woman in a brown coat" was actually a biological male, Jesse Strang, who "identified as a woman", Ms Panas watched in horror what she says has become a predictable pattern emerge online. 

Within minutes, she says some people began to leverage the tragedy to "advance hate" against the trans community. "This will just get uglier now for us and for our community as a whole, when our attention should be on the care of these victims and to support communities," she said.

This post is based on a report published this morning on... wait for it... CBC News.

Puzzled footnote: Agent 3 reports that Canada's Notional Pest oops, National Post, the least left of the lickspittle Canadian meeja, has turned off comments on all articles and columns related to this story. Wonder why... But you can still comment on the social media!

And check this out...

UPDATED: Jesse who? Latest on BC school massacre

What follows appeared on Canada's Global TV News website 46 minutes after Walt's last post on the tragedy at Tumbler Ridge BC. 

"BC RCMP have identified the shooter as 18-year-old female Jesse Van Rootselaar, who is a resident of Tumbler Ridge. [A spokesthingy] said they do have a history of police calls to the family residence involving Van Rootselaar, including some mental health calls."

Ed. was unable to find any photos -- male or female -- of "Jesse Van Rootselaar", but did find the photos above in which the subject is identified as 17-year-old "Jesse Strang". Could they be related? The Mounties later  said that the two Jesses were one and the same. "Jesse Van Rootselaar" is the name that "Jesse Strang" adopted when he changed his "gender identity".

Jesse's mother, Jennifer, and sibling, Emmett, were among the eight (8) victims of his actions. After killing them and wounding over two dozen others (see previous posts), he turned the gun, for which he had an expired licence, on himself. Total body count: 9.

UPDATE just seen on the Babylon Bee.

Mounties REFUSE to confirm trans "identity" of Tumbler Ridge killer

The massacre at Tumbler Ridge BC occurred at about 1300 PST yesterday. As I write, 21 hours later, Canada's lickspittle mainstream media are hushing up the identity and sexual orientation of the murderer -- Jesse "Jess" Strang. On the noon (EST) news, CTV News went with the liberal party line, as laid down by the state-owned CBC, to wit:

"RCMP Supt. Ken Floyd told reporters that investigators had identified a suspect, but would not immediately release a name. He also said the shooter's motive remained unclear, adding that police are still investigating how the victims are connected to the shooter. 

"Police said they believe the suspected shooter found dead at the school is the same person described in the active shooter alert sent to phones in the area earlier today. In an earlier alert Tuesday, police had described the suspect as 'female in a dress with brown hair.'"

Why the radio silence? Because, you see, Mr/Ms/Whatever Strang was a transsexual or at least a transsexual wannabe. That doesn't fit the woke wisdom which prevails in Canada, that there's nothing wrong with people who wish to change their birth sexuality, or should we say the sexuality imposed on them by their parents.. 

They "act out", the wokesters say, only because they're being deprived of their "right" to decide their gender identity for themselves. To suggest that people like Strang might be dangerous to themselves and others because of a form of mental illness is (of course) "unacceptable".

Probably just a coincidence

In the wake of the shooting at the Annunciation Catholic Church School in Minneapolis on Wednesday, we’re confronted with an uncomfortable but inevitable question: Is there some sort of correlation between transgenderism and mass school shootings?

This is, after all, the second time a transgender shooter has claimed lives at a Christian institution in about two years. This time, Robin Westman — born Robert — killed two and injured 17 more before killing himself. In 2023, in the Covenant School shooting, Audrey Elizabeth Hale — who identified as Aiden Hale — killed six and injured two.

Source: The Western Journal, 30/8/25. Thanks and h/t to Blazing Cat Fur.

What the WJ article does not mention is that both schools were faith-based schools, Catholic and evangelical Protestant respectively. The shootings may represent, in the minds of the queer shooters, revenge on churches which still consider homosexuality and related woke queerness, a sin which cries out to heaven for vengeance. 

Michael Matt, editor of The Remnant newspaper, has more to say about this in his latest video on this weekend's gay invasion of St. Peter's, which we'll repost here tomorrow.

Meme of the Week of Robin/Robert Westman

That pretty much sums up the week that was. You can forget about this story now. Nothing here to see folks. Just an isolated incident involving a person with issues.

UPDATED: Thoughts on the Uvalde massacre

Do not look here for witty comments on the massacre of nearly two dozen innocent people -- most of them children -- at Uvalde TX. Don't even expect a lengthy "think piece", as I have no questions that haven't already been asked, no solutions that haven't already been proffered. I have only these few thoughts....

25 years ago, in A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson asked what kind of world we live in where even park rangers carry service revolvers. Bill, that is not all the world, just the American part of it. The "gun culture" has become hard-wired into Americans. Many think, with some cause, that if everyone else has a gun, why should I be the only one unable to defend myself?

Park rangers carry sidearms, one supposes, because they are responsible for the safety of park users. They might need to shoot a bear or a rabid skunk... or a stalker who prowls the woods looking for innocents to rape or murder. (Bill Bryson writes of a double murder, still unsolved, in Shenandoah National Park.) By that reasoning, it may be that teachers, responsible as they are for the safety of their pupils, should carry guns. 

That thought has been expressed before. After Sandy Hook. After Columbine. These tragedies dramatize the question of gun control -- should there be more or less? -- which dominates political debate this week. 

The SJWs, Democrats and other liberals seize on the opportunity to express outrage and demonize conservatives, Republicans and other law-and-order types. So we have the disgraceful exhibition of Beto O'Rourke (D) interrupting the press conference of Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) to score what can only be called a political "own goal". Shameful.

The anti-Trumpers, SJWS, BLMers etc are having a much harder time with this one than with the Buffalo massacre. They can't put it down to anti-black racism / white supremacy, because the shooter and victims were all (apparently) Hispanics. And the murderer wasn't an illegal alien either, so those arguing for or against amnesty have nothing to say.

But the loony left and t hose pushing the "diversity and inclusivity" agenda will keep trying. One of the more ridiculous appeals I've seen is that of Jaden Janak, a PhD candidate at the University of Texas and a junior fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies. "These children and adults who were murdered yesterday were just living their lives," Mr/Ms/whatever Janak said yesterday. "They didn't know that yesterday was going to be their last day. And similarly, as trans people, that's a fear that we have all the time." Oh dear...

Enough politics. To close, I want to talk about the expressions of grief and other responses to this and just about every other similar incident. "Thoughts and prayers" is such a tired cliché, so overworked, that people (particularly politicians) seem to feel something further must be done to honour the dead, and show sympathy and support for the bereaved. 

"Taking a knee" is too political a statement. So we have the lowering of flags on public and private buildings even beyond the border of the US of A. (Agent 3 reports that this has been done at schools in a suburb of Toronto.) So often does this happen that it's becoming unusual to see flags flying at full staff. Upon seeing a flag at half-staff [not "half-mast". Ed.], people ask "Who's died now?" The gesture is now so commonplace as to be meaningless.

So also with the makeshift memorials of flowers, candles, balloons and teddybears which appear within hours at the site of any violent death, whether criminal or accidental. Putting a stuffed animal on the pile in front of the crime scene is nothing more than virtue-signalling, like placing a wreath on a war memorial.

What good do these "tributes" do for those who have died, or for their grieving families? Within a couple of days, the toys and flowers become nothing more than a pile of trash, to be removed under cover of night by the sanitation engineers. Wouldn't it be better to contribute to a GoFundMe appeal to help with funeral expenses, or a worthy charity which is trying to help heal our sick society? 

UPDATE ADDED 27/5/22: Canada's Global News reports that Meghan Markle, the Princess of Woke, yesterday visited the memorial site for the victims of the Uvalde school massacre. Dressed in attire appropriate to the occasion, she placed white flowers tied with a purple ribbon at a memorial outside the Uvalde County Courthouse. Mercifully, she refrained from making a speech. 

The Duchess of Sussex (her other title) lives in California with her husband Prince Hairy and their two mixed-race children. Further comment from me would be superfluous.

What motivates mass murderers?

Even leaving aside the almost daily attacks by Islamic jihadis, mass murders have been much in the news lately.

A couple of days ago, a Canadian aviation "expert" said he was "100% certain" that the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 -- still undiscovered somewhere at the bottom of the Indian Ocean -- was an extreme case of murder-suicide, perpetrated by the plane's pilot. Last month, 10 people were killed and 16 wounded by a young Toronto man who for some reason decided to drive a rented man down the sidewalk of a busy main street.

And in the USA, there are "school shootings", not in the ghettos of Los Angeles, Chicago, or Detroit, but in white(ish) locales in states like Florida (Parkland) and Texas (Santa Fe). The massacre at Columbine happened just over 19 years ago. Since then, there have been hundreds, hundreds of similar "incidents".

Why do people kill dozens, scores or even hundreds of innocent people? What is their motivation for mass murder? These are questions I ask myself every time something like this happens. It seems to me that only two reasons are possible. Someone who would commit such an atrocity must either be:

A - a fanatical follower of the Religion of Peace (read: Islam) or some other extremist religious and/or political group; or

B - someone whose cheese has slipped off his cracker (read: a psychotic individual).

In "Toronto killer of 10 'seemed a little off'... that's all", the perpetrator of the recent massacre in Canada's Proudly Diverse City is described as "kind of a loner, kept to himself, and 'seemed a little off'." Later it emerged that he identified himself as an "incel" -- "involuntarily celibate" -- someone who couldn't score with women and so decided to take his frustration out on the world.

The Santa Fe TX high school student who allegedly opened fire on his classmates on yesterday has been described as "a quiet and unassuming teenager who enjoys sports and showed few if any warning signs of violent behaviour." He was a member of a dance group at a local Greek Orthodox church and an avid videogame player, known among his classmates mostly for playing on the school's junior varsity football team. A teammate told a Houston TV station, "He stuck to himself. He had a few friends but never really talked to many people. For him to do something like this, it's crazy."

Exactly! But how did those young men -- they are always young men -- become "crazy"? And how are we supposed to protect ourselves and our communities against the crazy behaviour that kills?

To guard against Islamic terrorists, the authorities tell us "If you see something, say something!" But that doesn't work in the case of people like Deimitrios Pagourtzis, the Sante Fe High School killer. The only odd thing that people noticed about him was that he liked to wear a trench coat, even in the Texas heat. What are you gonna do, call 9-1-1 and tell them "my classmate keeps coming to school in a trenchcoat!"?

For that very reason, stricter gun controls won't work, unless America can be turned into some kind of liberal Utopia in which no-one, absolutely no-one has a gun, which seems highly unlikely, to put it mildly. And if that were so, what is to stop a crazy man [or woman! Ed.] from finding another weapon... like a rental van. If you have a good answer to my question, something that doesn't involve locking up every oddball and eccentric in the land, please tell the world... quick!!!