I Survived Canada’s Deadliest Mass Shooter. Then I Had to Prove It

Photo Illustrations by Adam Maida / The Canadian Press

This story was originally published on thewalrus.ca

By Lisa Banfield

On April 18, 2020, Gabriel Wortman murdered thirteen of his neighbours in Portapique, Nova Scotia. He hid in a nearby field overnight and killed nine more people the following day, including a pregnant woman. He died later that morning, after RCMP officers fired on him at a gas station.

Lisa Banfield, Wortman’s common-law partner, endured years of violence from Wortman. She escaped with her life the night his shooting rampage began. Six months following the murders, Banfield went back to Portapique and walked officers through her last moments with Wortman.

Her account of that fraught return is excerpted below from her book The First Survivor: Life with Canada’s Deadliest Mass Shooter. She wrote the book hoping to inspire greater compassion for women in abusive relationships, including among women who are themselves experiencing abuse.

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I was determined to return to Portapique before the snow fell. Anyone who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder will understand why returning to the scene would trigger and heighten the flashbacks, nightmares, and panic attacks I experienced that summer. I knew it would be gruelling and awful, but I felt I needed to go. My sisters Janice and Maureen questioned if I was ready, concerned it would be too much for me. My clinical therapist warned it was risky for my mental health. Despite their cautions, I desperately wanted to find proof of my experience.

Staff Sergeant Greg Vardy told me he had experience helping victims get closure this way and would join me. Vardy was a “truth verification” expert with the RCMP, with thirty years’ experience assisting in criminal investigations to help determine the truthfulness of witnesses, suspects, and victims. The RCMP were facing intense scrutiny from the families of Gabriel’s twenty-two victims and an unborn child. They demanded an inquiry into the mishandling of the search for Gabriel during his rampage and failure to notify people sooner that he was posing as an RCMP officer.

While my sisters paid close attention to the storm swirling around the police force’s actions on that April weekend, I avoided the news. In my state, stories of the families’ despair