Massive virtual vigil honours shooting victims
HALIFAX — A virtual vigil, Nova Scotia Remembers, held Friday evening in memory of the victims of the mass shooting last weekend garnered interest across the country, with musicians, celebrities and politicians taking part.
The vigil was hosted through Colchester Supporting Our Communities Facebook group, and through Youtube. The website novascotiaremembers.ca also provided a list of media coverage of the event, as well as verified charities supporting the families.
It was expected to run for about three hours — past The Telegram’s press deadline.
It garnered mentions from Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau and countless social media references across the country.
Cees van den Hoek is one of the administrators of the Facebook group that hosted the event. He’s a longtime resident of the Portapique area and, like most Nova Scotians, was deeply affected by the tragedy.
“It’s going to be a combination of music and dedications or tributes (and) there’s going to be some politicians, some (celebrities),” he said.
The killings, which started in Portapique Saturday evening and continued Sunday morning through Wentworth and other communities before ending when the gunman was killed by RCMP officers in Enfield, left 22 people dead, including a 17-year-old girl.
They are RCMP Const. Heidi Stevenson, Greg and Jaime Blair, Lisa Mccully, Heather O’brien, Alanna Jenkins and Sean Mcleod, Jolene Oliver, Emily Tuck and Aaron (Friar) Tuck, Frank Gulenchyn and Dawn Madsen, Gina Goulet, Lillian Hyslop, Tom Bagley, Kristen Beaton, John Zahl and Elizabeth Joanne Thomas, Corrie Ellison, Joey Webber, and Joy and Peter Bond.
Van den Hoek moved from the community within the past year, but said he has a house and a former church he had planned to turn into an antique store in Portapique. His children still attended after-school programming and friends’ birthday parties before the COVID-19 pandemic forced people into isolation.
He said the online comments from all over Canada bring a measure of comfort. “There’s a lot of hurting people … not just Nova Scotia, through the country, and we’re all stuck at home, sitting at home,” he said. “It gives everybody an outlet to grieve, to share.”
He has started a memorial in front of the church and is asking people to mail him any contributions they wish to include at 6896 Highway #2, Portapique, N.S., B0M 1B0, or to drop them off. To minimize the impact and potential exposure of mail carriers to the coronavirus, he is also asking others to step up to provide a collection box at the end of their driveways for contributions from their respective areas.
“We’re trying to get as little handling as possible, so instead of 1,000 letters coming through Canada Post, it’ll be 300 letters and then a bunch of boxes, because … with the whole COVID-19, we don’t want to make more chances of spreading anything, so all those things have to be kind of minimized.”