The La Loche Shooting is Not A Part of an American Trend

A tragic, isolated instance should not be conflated with America’s problems

A Canadian town already plagued by high suicide rates stepped into the spotlight on Jan. 22 when a school shooting left four dead and seven in critical condition.

The shooter, a teenager who cannot be named due to the Youth Criminal Justice Act, was part of La Loche, a self-described Dene community numbering under 3,000, where suicide rates have skyrocketed to three times above the national average, according to CBC.

Although we don’t have much information, people are still drawing links between this incident and the shootings that seem to happen more regularly in America. However, I’m going to come right out and say that no, this sort of thing isn’t common in Canada.

To put it into perspective, there are more school shootings each year in the U.S. than there are in the entire history of Canada—and for most of those years, there were at least four times as many as we’ve ever had here in the north. Before 2016, the amount of school shootings we’ve had could have been counted on one hand.

This doesn’t downplay the seriousness of the incident, but it does pull us away from the fear embedded in the American psyche that parents are up in arms about.

So no, there’s no connection between this isolated event and what goes on in America. They might be our downstairs neighbours, but there must be some fundamental difference between the two countries, at least in respect to events like these.