(LifeSiteNews) — The tragedy on Wednesday in British Columbia, in which an 18-year-old shooter killed his mother, his 11-year-old stepbrother, a teacher, five children, and injured over 25 before committing suicide, has exposed the fact that the transgender movement has divided Canada into two solitudes.
If you get your news primarily from the mainstream press, you will be under the impression that a “gunperson” later identified as Jesse Van Rootselaar, a young woman, opened fire in her small community. The CBC, the Toronto Star, the Vancouver Sun, CTV, Global News, the Globe and Mail, the Winnipeg Free Press, the Ottawa Citizen, the Montreal Gazette, and others all referred to the shooter as female.
Those Canadians who can translate the news could have figured out what happened – that is, those who know that a “transgender woman” is not in fact a woman, and that “born biologically male” means “male.” The truth was disguised under a layer of ideological propaganda and had to be excavated. The CBC interviewed the shooter’s father and went so far as to note and correct the father’s use of male pronouns:
In his statement, Justin Van Rootselaar refers to his child as Jesse Strang and uses he/him pronouns to describe her. According to police, Jesse Van Rootselaar was assigned male at birth and began transitioning to female about six years ago.
READ: Florida pageant queen loses title for refusing to accept transgender ideology
In fact, the media has almost universally identified the shooter as “Jesse Van Rootselaar” – but that, too, has turned out not to be accurate. As Juno News, the independent outlet that identified the shooter long before any mainstream media outlet had the facts, spoke with the shooter’s father first. Justin Van Rootselaar stated unequivocally that: “(He) had a passport and the name on it is not Van Rootselaar.”
The mainstream press has lost a lot of power now that X and other sites permit the truth to be published, but their ability to shape a collective narrative is still tremendously powerful. As one activist noted on X: “Just talking to Dad and he remarked how unusual it is that the Canadian mass shooting was carried out by a woman … Every ‘journalist’ who has caused this should never work again, every ‘news’ agency putting it out there should be bankrupt.”
In fact, the only way you could get the “straight news” without translating deliberately murky ideological language is if you were following one of the “activist” news outlets, with Juno News spearheading breaking coverage on this particular story. Some international outlets also accurately reported Jesse Strang’s sex. When the Telegraph broke the story that Strang might have come to the school to kill the rest of his family (his siblings attended Tumbler Ridge high school), the eyewitness referred to the shooter with male pronouns.
So did all of the neighbors and other residents of Tumbler Ridge who spoke with the reporter. In short, those who live in the town are explaining what they saw. The media is reporting what trans activists have ordered them to see.
The mainstream press is working hard both to ensure that the late killer’s pronoun preferences are respected, but also that his transgender identity doesn’t lead to any questions about the intersection of gender dysphoria and mental illness. As I noted in The European Conservative yesterday, the CBC and CityNews Halifax kicked it off with long articles attempting to debunk any connection between transgenderism and violence.
But immediately, nearly every media outlet followed suit, including the Coast Reporter, The Canadian Press, CTV News, the Times Colonist, Globe and Mail, the Winnipeg Free Press, and more. Foreign news outlets, such as the Spectator, are permitted to ask questions about the connection between trans identities, mental illness, and violence – but Canadian outlets cannot. As the New York Post put it:
Yet when journalists knowingly discard biological reality and gloss over the link to mental health, they don’t just mislead readers; they actively interfere with our ability to understand reality, and therefore, assess danger. For years, the public has been told that identifying as the opposite sex is simply another harmless expression of one’s self-identity.
Questioning it is dangerous, cruel – “bigotry.” Exploring whether transgender identity may signal deeper psychological distress is forbidden. Professionals who dare to raise concerns are threatened with loss of their licenses, professional reputation and livelihood. That dogma has consequences, as another community has learned the hard way. Let’s admit it: believing you’re the opposite of your biological sex is simply not a normal, or neutral, position.
It’s quite likely often a sign of some kind of psychological distress – perhaps accompanied by depression, dissociation, autism spectrum disorders, self-harm, suicidal ideation and extreme social isolation. That doesn’t mean every person with gender dysphoria is violent or even deeply sick. But it does mean that when young people are spiraling, we shouldn’t ignore the signs – or worse, affirm their delusions. Alas, mental health professionals insist we do just that.
READ: Indiana will no longer let gender-confused people change sex on drivers licenses, IDs
But in Canada, we are not permitted to have that discussion. The mainstream press, with the exception of the National Post, initiated a near-total reporting blackout when the Cass Review, which resulted in a permanent ban on sex change “treatments” for minors in the U.K., was published. Backtracking by major American organizations on so-called transitions for minors, such as the American Medical Association, have also been ignored.
In Canada, if someone claims to be trans, the law dictates that medical professionals “affirm,” that families get in line, that schools facilitate. And if the gender-confused minor wants body-affirming therapy to feel comfortable with their sex? Too bad. Trudeau’s Bill C-4 dubbed that “conversion therapy” and it’s illegal.
So when Jesse Strang moaned that he wanted to be a “petite girl”? That was not, as every previous generation of Canadians would have recognized, clear evidence of mental disturbance. It was evidence of his transness, which needed to be immediately and unequivocally affirmed. Even after he perpetrated a mass murder and killed himself, trans activists are there to ensure that his pronouns are posthumously respected.
What happened in Tumbler Ridge on Wednesday? A young man killed his mother, his little stepbrother, five children, and a teacher. But only Canadians who are willing to ignore the mainstream media will actually know that.
