‘No easy way out’: Survivor of Canada’s deadliest school shooting on coping and the healing process

A survivor of Canada’s deadliest school shooting says the grieving community of Tumbler Ridge, B.C., where a shooter killed six school-aged children and two adults on Tuesday, has a long healing journey ahead of it, but it isn’t without hope.

“I think that the parents, the families, those who are near will be able to learn a lot and to gain strength with love and with the help of others,” Ecole Polytechnique shooting survivor and Quebec MP Nathalie Provost told CTV News Channel on Thursday.

“There’s hope in it.”

Provost described the healing process as “a journey made of waves,” with times of extreme difficulty followed by smoother periods “when you feel you will be getting out.”

“It’s a bit like breathing,” she said, “you go in and you go out and you learn through that process.”

In 1989, Provost was shot in the leg, foot and forehead by a gunman who killed 14 of her female classmates at an engineering school in Montreal. The Tumbler Ridge shooting was the deadliest at a Canadian school since.

Provost said the survivors of Tuesday’s shooting, as well as the families and loved ones of the victims, will each have their own unique way of coping in the aftermath of the tragedy.

“When you have to fight for your life and for your survival in those kinds of stories of tragedy, you have to cope with what happened, but you also have to deal with your past,” she said.

“Families will have to deal with raising their kids but also with (making sense of) how they were and what’s good for them now. There’s no easy way out, we all have to go deep into us to find our strength and to understand our own story to find our way to healing.”

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For Provost, who in the years since the Ecole Polytechnique massacre has become a staunch gun control advocate and activist to reduce violence against women, it’s been a “lifelong process” of healing.

After recovering from her injuries, Provost said she returned to Ecole Polytechnique five or six weeks later to continue her studies, earning her bachelor’s degree the following year.

“I don’t know if you will believe me but in my own case … that was a strong part in my own healing process,” she explained.

“I was going back there with my friends in a place I loved, in a place where I can find consolation with all the other (survivors), and people understood me, I didn’t have to explain what I felt, we were all feeling the same together.”

At the time of the massacre at Ecole Polytechnique, Provost was 23. The five students killed at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School were between the ages of 12 and 13.

• Survivor describes Tumbler Ridge school shooting

“It’s not the same path for everyone and there’s not only one way to get out, but I think we should have a strong confidence in all those young kids,” she said.

“They want to be alive and we have to give them hope that they are able to find a way out of that grief and that they will be happy after.”