WARNING: This article contains graphic details and may affect those who have experienced sexual violence or know someone affected by it.
As the country tries to come to grips with the shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., this week, a prominent New Democrat stepped forward to share the horror of the school shooting she survived and to impart her hopes for those impacted by this latest tragedy.
Anne McGrath is best known a major progressive political operator who served as her party’s national president, national director and chief of staff to former Alberta NDP premier Rachel Notley.
What many don’t know about McGrath is that 50 years ago she was a 17-year-old student at St. Pius X High School in Ottawa when a student she knew burst into her classroom and opened fire with a shotgun.
“Fifty years ago nobody talked about these things,” she told CBC’s Power & Politics host David Cochrane.
“The message always was to move on, to get past it, to not bring it up and so I have actually lived most of my life not talking to people about it.”
On the morning of Oct. 27, 1975, Robert Poulin, a student who sat in front of McGrath in algebra class, raped and murdered 17-year-old Kim Rabot, who was a student at Glebe Collegiate Institute.
Poulin then took a sawed-off pump-action shotgun he’d bought at Giant Tiger, biked to his high school and kicked open the door of classroom 71 where McGrath was attending a lesson with other students.
She remembers hitting the floor to hide as Poulin fired his gun, seriously injuring 18-year-old Mark Hough. All other students in the class survived but Hough died a month later from his injuries.
There were no lockdown protocols, no active shooter drills in those days and certainly no real understanding of how to meet kids leaving the school that day and make sure they got home safely, she said.
A different time, a different response
“When we finally did leave, there was nowhere to go,” McGrath said. “I remember, for instance, walking down the backstreets by myself, hiding behind trees and bushes every time a car would come by in case there were shooters everywhere.”
McGrath said that without mobile phones, social media or police telling them the shooter had taken his life and was no longer a threat, they didn’t know what to do.
“It was total chaos. We were like zombies and we scattered,” she said. “I remember going to the police station later that night to give a witness statement, or whatever it was, not realizing that I had blood and brains in my hair.
“It was an unreal experience, you know, and I don’t think you ever feel completely safe after something like that,” she said.
In the months after the shooting she says she couldn’t cope with having her senses impaired so wouldn’t take showers, instead choosing to take a quiet bath.
She says she could not sleep without the lights on either, and while she has shelved some of her coping mechanisms, others remain.
“I make sure my desk is always facing the door. I check exits when I walk into any space,” she said. “I either overreact or completely don’t react to loud noises or commotions.”
McGrath says the school eventually brought counsellors in to speak to students about the tragedy but it was not until months later.
“I went to one session with the counsellor during school, and it was one counsellor who had been brought in and there were four or five of us in a group,” she said. “I can tell you I did not say one word in that session.”
McGrath says that because there was no effective trauma response to what happened to the kids at St. Pius X, she didn’t process what happened to her.
‘I was filled with rage and fear’
“But I do notice some differences, for sure,” she said. “The response is much better now; the presence of counsellors. I noticed, for instance, in Tumbler Ridge that the school is closed for the week; we went back to school the next day.”
That may seem shocking in 2026, but as McGrath says: “I think it’s what people thought was the right thing to do at the time.”
She says she reacted to the trauma by getting angry at everything because she was so upset at what had happened to her and her friends.
“I was filled with rage and fear and my parents and my siblings and others were probably walking on eggshells around me because they probably didn’t want to say the wrong thing,” she said.
McGrath now says that as the community of Tumbler Ridge grapples with this tragedy, she wants people to know that it’s very hard for everyone in different ways — and empathy is required to meet the moment.
“I think we need people to be compassionate, but to recognize that everyone is an individual. Some of them will want to talk a lot, some of them will not want to talk at all,” she said.
“I believe that it is very hard for the family and friends who were not there or who experienced it second hand, to know what to do.”
The increased awareness about how trauma impacts people, access to trauma counsellors and understanding that the children returning to school will not be themselves are requirements for healing, she said.
McGrath told Cochrane that while “the difference in how we respond to these things is just astronomical,” it may prove to be the reality that people find a new normal, rather than resurrect the old one.
McGrath says that for her, she doesn’t know if life at school ever really returned to the way it was, but she found a way to move forward.
“I don’t think normal, but you do adjust I guess, and you keep going to school and you keep writing papers and doing exams and the next year I went to university,” she said.
“But you’re aware of things that probably other people your age are not aware of.”
If you’re in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911. For support in your area, you can look for crisis lines and local services via the Ending Sexual Violence Association of Canada database.
If you or someone you know is struggling, here’s where to look for help:
