One of Canada’s worst mass shootings in history took place in the small community of Tumbler Ridge, B.C., on Tuesday. A shooter killed at least nine other people and injured at least 25 more at the town’s secondary school and a nearby residence before taking their own life. It marks the third-deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history, though that could change as more information becomes available.
This is a senseless act of violence that will leave a dark stain on the close-knit rural community of around 2,400 people for generations. It’s also a rapidly developing news story with very little confirmed information so far.
In a news conference Wednesday, B.C. RCMP identified 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, a trans woman, as the shooter.
“We understand that the community has questions, and want to understand the motive behind this tragic incident,” Dwayne McDonald, deputy commissioner said. McDonald confirmed Van Roostelaar’s trans identity during the presser.
But before it was even confirmed, in the immediate hours following the shooting, far-right media, online commentators and even at least one elected official in Canada were already blaming the tragedy on trans people and using this incident as evidence to argue for restricting gender-affirming care, walking back sexual orientation and gender identity education and rolling back trans rights at large.
Much like with the wave of dangerous misinformation that swirled in the hours following the murder of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk last year, nothing good is going to come from this rush to centre Van Rootselaar’s identity in this story. And it’s another dark example of how pervasive anti-trans misinformation around violence has become even in Canada.
Just hours following the shooting, Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream MLA Tara Armstrong—who left the provincial Conservative Party in 2024 and now sits as an independent—claimed in a sweeping post on X that the then-unnamed shooter was trans, connected transness to mental illness and suggested that gender-affirming care is connected to this “epidemic of violence.”
And while Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre didn’t make any direct reference to trans people in his X post offering condolences to the victims and their families, you’ll find similar misinformation and calls for restrictions on trans rights running rampant in the replies.
This narrative has been boosted by far-right voices south of the border too, including YouTuber Benny Johnson and influencer Andy Ngo, who also used the lack of information about the suspect to suggest Canadian officials were hiding that the person was trans to their millions of followers.
As of writing, we know very little confirmed information about Van Rootselaar’s identity or her motivations. This specific rhetoric around Van Rootselaar being trans is birthed from police alerts during the incident identifying a possible suspect as a “gunperson” and a “female in a dress with brown hair,” along with unverified reports from far-right media about social media accounts allegedly connected to a possible suspect.
In the coming days, we will know more about Van Rootselaar. But regardless, this senseless act of violence will be used to argue for further restrictions on the rights of trans people in Canada, just as similar incidents have in the U.S.
Misinformation about violence by trans people is such a pervasive trend that it has its own Wikipedia page. In recent years, it has become increasingly common for far-right media and anti-trans advocates to immediately rush to draw connections between trans people, our care and mass violence even when there is nothing there.
An analysis by Wired last year found at least 12 violent events between 2022 and 2025 that were falsely blamed on trans people by prominent right-wing figures in America, including Republican congressman Paul Gosar incorrectly claiming that the 2022 Uvalde school shooting was perpetrated by a “transsexual leftist illegal alien” and Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik calling the 2024 Lakewood Church shooting “another act of trans terrorism.”
I wrote about this trend in September when American commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated at a university event in Utah. In the hours following Kirk’s death, misinformation around the shooter and false reports that the bullet cases included “transgender ideology” made their way even into mainstream media like the Wall Street Journal.
Those reports ended up being largely debunked as the shooter was found to be—as is the case in more than 98 percent of mass shootings in the United States—a cis man. But even after these reports were debunked, dozens of outlets had repeated the initial reports from the Wall Street Journal.
The fact that this tragic event in Tumbler Ridge immediately inspired calls for restrictions on gender-affirming care and trans rights at large in Canada should raise huge alarm bells for trans people and our allies.
South of the border, this sort of dangerous jumping to conclusions has led to calls to ban trans people from owning firearms and continued misinformation linking trans identity to mental illness.
Canada has largely been shielded from this specific flavour of anti-trans rhetoric simply because mass shootings on this level rarely happen here. But this incident shows that the toxic sludge of anti-trans discourse has a firm hold in our political and online sphere here too. And that can have a tangible impact on government policy.
Armstrong’s post directly connects misinformation about trans people being inherently dangerous or mentally ill to broader perceptions of trans people. Transness as mental illness is a road that society has been down before, and it’s a dangerous narrative to bring back into public discourse.
The shooter’s identity will likely be used in legislatures across Canada to argue against life-saving medical care for young people, inclusive education in schools and the outlawing of harmful conversion therapy practices. Much like debunked medical studies like the Cass Review, politicians often turn to isolated news events to justify their restrictive policies.
An entire community is mourning a horrific loss in Tumbler Ridge this week. And how it is being talked about online, and the dangerous links being made to trans people at large, will have resounding and dangerous impacts in the months and weeks to come. Right now the focus should be on supporting the community in mourning, not weaponizing this event as hate against a vulnerable group at large.
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