Nova Scotia MP Lenore Zann serves the riding of Cumberland-Colchester. (Government of Canada)
People all over the world have been expressing their sadness and shock over the horrific events in this province over the weekend.
Lenore Zann, the MP for Cumberland-Colchester, describes the atmosphere in the area as being like a living nightmare.
“It’s like a wave of shock that just keeps spreading, like you throw a pebble into the water and the rings just keep getting bigger and wider. That’s what it’s like, because if there’s just one incident, it’s like a drip, drip, drip effect.”
She says the fact that not every crime scene has been cleared and people are still finding out details makes it harder to process, as does the fact that people can’t gather to grieve.
“Awful. It’s just awful. Who can fathom this?…And…there’s so many people that are affected. It’s been really, really difficult. Nobody’s used to having to go through something like this and…and my heart just goes out to everybody that’s lost somebody.”
The MP was shocked to learn the shooting suspect on the weekend was able to move around so easily because he was disguised as a Mountie.
Zann says she was surprised when she heard you can buy badges and insignia online.
“I would have thought they’d destroy them when they were no longer being used. I don’t know how these auctions get these materials but I would say that the force should not want those things out there for the public to just buy…then again, these days people can replicate pretty much anything, can’t they?”
She was also surprised to find out nobody reported the gear he owned, including the car.
“It’s hard to believe, really, that nobody would have noticed that he was doing this to a car and trying to turn it into a police-looking vehicle without anybody saying anything to authorities.”
People who knew the shooter say he was known for buying surplus RCMP equipment and customers say he had photos of a replica uniform.
Although impersonating an officer is a crime, owning police equipment is not.
One of the main questions in the aftermath of the weekend murders in Nova Scotia is why wasn’t there an emergency alert?
Zann thinks there should have been an alert Saturday night to warn people in the area.
“Certainly, by the time they knew he was on the road and moving, yeah, it would have been nice to have an alert go out to everybody…and hopefully they’ll learn from this incident. I mean let’s be clear, this has never really happened here before. The only time I’ve ever seen it was for the COVID-19 crisis and, hopefully, going forward we will have alerts.”
Zann says she retweeted the RCMP Twitter update but then decided sharing it on Facebook would reach more people.
“I thought, well, most people in my riding, they don’t pay attention to Twitter. They’re older, it’s an older demographic. We use Facebook. So, I then took a picture of it and then I posted it on Facebook.”
The MP feels emergency alerts should be done automatically in situations like this, although, as she points out, nothing like this has ever happened in Nova Scotia.
There will be virtual vigil Friday night in memory of the victims of last weekend’s shootings in Nova Scotia.
Zann says it is being organized by the Facebook group “Colchester- Supporting our Communities” and will run from 7 to 9 p.m.
“It’s really kind of these people to put it together, they were just trying to wrack their brain and trting to figure ‘what can we do for the families, and they came up with this idea, so, you know, a virtual vigil, when we can’t all get together physically and grieve seems like a good idea.”
Guest speakers will include Zann and the prime minister, and there will be several musical performances, including Dave Gunning and J.P. Cormier.
She says her involvement came after they approached her to help spread the word.
“I started saying it on interviews I was doing, including national interviews, and then they asked me if I could get a message to the Prime Minister about it and I wrote a text to one of his assistants and they said absolutely he would be happy to help spread the word, so he mentioned it in one of his updates.”
Zann says they asked if the prime minister could record a message for them and he agreed, as did she.
The Facebook page also includes information on a GoFundMe for the families of the victims.
