Tumbler Ridge school to be torn down and rebuilt

The school in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., where students were killed in a mass shooting in February will be torn down and rebuilt on a new site.

Premier David Eby said Thursday that the decision by the local school board came after it consulted survivors, victims’ relatives and the broader community about the “right path” for Tumbler Ridge Secondary School students.

“The direction of the community is clear, they wanted to go with a new school on a new site,” Eby told a news conference at the legislature in Victoria.

Tumbler Ridge Mayor Darryl Krakowka called the move “a step forward.”

“I think what happens there, it allows our children, our youth to know that they are not being forced back into that school that had a horrific tragedy,” he said in an interview.

Five pupils and an educational assistant were killed at the school in the Feb. 10 attack, which came after shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar killed her mother and half-brother at their home. Van Rootselaar also fatally shot herself at the school.

“I want to thank the community for their heroism, for their courage, for their resilience, and look forward to working with them … on ensuring that the kids in Tumbler Ridge have a safe and comfortable and healing place to return to school,” Eby said.

He said the federal government would help fund the replacement of the school, and the school board would work with the community and experts on its design.

Some experts have previously warned against the idea of moving the school, saying it could reinforce a sense of “avoidance.”

Dr. Arash Javanbakht, a psychiatrist and the founding director of the Stress, Trauma and Anxiety Research Clinic at Wayne State University in Michigan, told The Canadian Press earlier this year that “gradual exposure back to the school” was important.

The students will move out of their current portable classrooms into eight large modular classrooms later this month, while waiting for the construction of the new facility.

A news release from the federal government says the new modular classrooms can hold 25 to 30 students and will offer a more comfortable learning environment until the new school is built.

Eby said students would remain in the modular classrooms for an “extended period,” but it would have been about the same whether a new school was built or the old one rehabilitated.

He said the new school would be built as quickly as possible because “it’s a special kind of project for the province,” but did not give a firm timeline.

“I know for this project in particular, there’s just so much goodwill for Tumbler Ridge right now, whether it’s among the province, as a whole, or the contracting community, the construction community … I suspect that we will able to pull people together very quickly to respond and get this project built as quickly as possible,” Eby said.

Krakowka said the commitments from the provincial and federal governments showed they will be there for the community.

Gregor Robertson, the federal minister of housing and infrastructure, said the community in Tumbler Ridge “has persevered and shown such strength.”

“We are focused on providing the students with the support they need and a new school will help make that happen,” he said in a statement.

The Conservative Party of B.C. welcomed the announcements, but also urged additional steps.

Claire Rattee, the party’s critic for mental health, addictions and housing supports, said the decision to demolish and rebuild offered the community a way forward.

“But we cannot stop there,” she said, urging the government to rebuild mental health supports. “We need to ask the difficult question: what gaps in our mental health system allowed this tragedy to occur, and what must change, so it never happens again. That is why a full public inquiry remains essential.”

Asked about mental health supports, Eby said he had confidence that Krakowka “feels that the health authority has done a very good job of ensuring the availability of mental health services, counselling supports for kids, teachers, families, others.”

While a coroner’s inquest into the killings has been announced, the government has not committed to a public inquiry.

But Eby said one would take place if the coroner’s probe and ongoing police investigation did not provide answers.

He acknowledged there were still many questions about the killings, including the origin of the guns used by Van Rootselaar, the role of the shooter’s interactions with OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, the role of mental health services and whether there was an opportunity for authorities “to have flagged, identified and otherwise addressed” the situation.

“My commitment to British Columbians is that we will get answers to these questions. If for some reason, the police investigation or the coroner’s inquest is not able to get these answers for British Columbians, of course we would move to public inquiry to get those answers.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 7, 2026.