WORTMAN : was the 18th the night, fight or no fight ?

Springhill is the home of the famously bare-footed singer, Anne Murray

I might get organized pushback for even suggesting this alternative explanation —- and not for the very excellent reason that currently it is only based on a quite limited single new piece of information.

No the reason for all the pushback is because the Portapique spree killings have been taken up by a very big, very old, very disheartened campaign for a particular social justice, one that has been making little headway despite the huge size of the pool of potential victims.

Here’s what motivates this campaign : it is that the majority of Canadians —- ie women — face a very real - statistically - threat to be physically or psychologically badly hurt or even killed by their male partners over their lifetimes.

Canada’s previous biggest mass killings, in Montreal, at a Polytechnique, was exclusively directed against women.

But it was not sparked by a act of domestic violence by the killer against his partner.

The new, now biggest, mass killing in Canada (Portapique) definitely did begin with an act of domestic violence - the women narrowly avoiding a horrible death when she escaped.

Seemingly then the campaign against domestic violence can finally push past the endless but scattered acts of domestic violence that get so little discussion every time they happen  to tie the issue to a huge, huge media event : Gabriel Wortman’s spree is going to be discussed for many, many decades.

So : a huge ongoing news story - and seemingly tied directly to an direct act of violence against a female partner.

In a horrible way, a sort of break : because the campaign against domestic violence never ever gets a halfway fair shake.

Consider that one of the most censored form of news coverage, censorship of Cold War proportions,   is the form of domestic violence we call murder-suicide  —- as long as the killer is a man - and almost always that is so.

It needn’t involve only the female partner’s death : it can be parents, siblings, grandparents, kids, etc.

As long as all the multiple deaths are within the family, broadly defined, it barely get reported.

But unfairly, if a woman (aka mother) kills her kids —- its huge news.

But if man (aka dad) kills kids and wife, at the same time, its no news.

Its bloody unfair.

Seeing the Portapique spree killings as beginning with an act of domestic violence against the killer’s female partner has been a commonplace amongst all forms of media.

Nevertheless, I was on a Facebook forum today when a new member, from the Cumberland-Colchester area, said that Gabriel Wortman was in Springhill Cumberland County, a large town 50 minutes by car from Portapique on Friday April 17th, the day before the shooting.

He ran into an acquaintance there and after chatting, he concluded by saying “ I always liked you X”, before driving off.

As soon as that acquaintance X heard that Gabriel was the spree killer, he thought back to those parting words of only a few hours before.

Given that GW the imagined grievance-collector had just murdered sixteen others of his acquaintances, I bet he did ! Narrow escape.

The forum member thought that this reflected GW’s suicidal mind, in this case death by cop but not before going out in a real burning and killing blaze of glory.

He felt that GW deliberately picked the domestic fight, to get it started, to fuel his rage.

I think we would need a variety of folks reporting similar “goodbye statements” before we draw a firm conclusion.

As I have said, Gabe might be rich but he was also frugal in a perverse way, always trying to get one over the world by getting the world’s biggest best bargains.

So yes he bought $800 of gas, evidence suggested he planned his little Gotterdammerung  at least a month in advance.

But, equally, it can be argued that as gas keeps for months and he had lots of vehicles of all sorts, maybe he was merely buying lots of gas while covid temporarily put gas at record low prices.

So I won’t rush to judgement on any of this.

Except I am SURE - with no real hard evidence except the distinct lack of hard evidence either way - that wee Gabe had a chaotic uncertain babyhood from birth to about age six.....