Tumbler Ridge Secondary School to be torn down in wake of mass shooting

The secondary school in northeastern British Columbia where six innocent people were killed and two others wounded in one of Canada’s deadliest mass shootings earlier this year will be torn down.

School District 59 announced the plan to “remove” Tumbler Ridge Secondary School Thursday, and B.C. Premier David Eby discussed the decision at a news conference.

The premier said the district had made the decision to replace the old secondary school with a new facility at a new location in the community.

Eby said the school board led the consultation process with community members to determine next steps for secondary students in Tumbler Ridge.

“What they heard overwhelmingly was that the students, the educators, the staff and others wanted to move to a new location,” he said.

Eby said the federal government had committed to help pay for the new school, though he was unable to provide a cost estimate or construction timeline for the project.

The premier further pledged that neither the province nor Ottawa would be diverting education funds from other communities to pay for Tumbler Ridge’s new school.

The school board will work with the local community to come up with a design and plan for the new facility, Eby said, adding that the province hopes that this design work will be completed and “brought back before the community” before the end of this year.

“As a province, we’re committed to getting this new school built as quickly as possible within our authorities as a provincial government,” Eby said.

On Feb. 10, Jesse Van Rootselaar, an 18-year-old former student at the school, shot and killed her mother and sibling at their home. She then walked to the high school and opened fire, killing five young students and a teacher’s aide before shooting herself.

The mass murder shocked the small community, which has about 2,400 residents, and drew an outpouring of grief from across the province, the country and the world.

The secondary school has remained closed since the shooting. Its students resumed attending classes in portable classrooms set up at the town’s elementary school in late February.

Regardless of whether the old school were renovated or replaced, students were going to need to be out of the building for an extended period of time, Eby said Thursday.

He said the portables that were brought to the community in February will be replaced by “large, modern, spacious modular classrooms” while the work to design and construct a new high school is ongoing.

In a letter to families on Feb. 13, the superintendent of schools for Peace River South wrote that her expectation was that students would not be returning to the secondary school site in the wake of the tragedy.

Eby made the same promise the following day.

“I will promise you that not one of you will ever be forced to go back to that school,” the premier said at the time.

He referenced those remarks at the start of his news conference Thursday, saying he was “pleased” to be able to keep that promise.

“I want to thank the community for their heroism, for their courage, for their resilience, and I look forward to working with them, as does the (Education) Minister (Lisa Beare), on ensuring that the kids of Tumbler Ridge have a safe, comfortable and healing place to return to school,” Eby said.

With files from The Canadian Press