On Feb. 10, 2026, a shooter killed eight people and injured 27 others, before taking her own life, in the tiny community of Tumbler Ridge, B.C. She was later identified as 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, a trans woman.
Now a new report from the Canadian Anti-Hate Network is documenting some of the key voices from both media and politics that worked to spread anti-trans fear and misinformation in the days and hours following the attack.
According to a previous report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, there was a significant spike in anti-LGBTQ2S+ online content following the incident, with Canadian users posting more than 10,000 instances of anti-LGBTQ2S+ content the day after the attack, and anti-LGBTQ2S+ posts from domestic extremist accounts seeing a rise of more than 1,000 percent.
The new report, Online Transphobia Following the 2026 Tumbler Ridge School Shooting from the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, homes in how much of the content shared online in 72 hours after the incident overwhelmingly focused on the trans identity of the shooter, including denigrating and denying the existence of all trans people.
We break down what you need to know.
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