Nova Scotia’s culture of silence is deadly

This past week, Lisa Banfield, the former spouse of mass shooter Gabriel Wortman, gave a series of public interviews ahead of the release of her book, First Survivor: Life with Canada’s Deadliest Mass Shooter. In it, she recounts decades of psychological and physical violence. What Banfield describes aligns with what experts call coercive control and intimate partner violence (IPV): sustained abuse that systematically erodes autonomy, safety, and a sense of self.

The threats to harm her family if she left him, the degrading psychological abuse, the gaslighting, the assaults—these were not isolated incidents, but entrenched patterns in their relationship. This is how abuse works: not as a single act of violence, but as a slow, cumulative process that traps survivors through fear, dependency, and erosion over time.

Banfield also spoke candidly about her childhood. She endured physical abuse by her father and survived a serious sexual assault by a neighbour. When she disclosed that assault, her father minimized it, undermining her bodily autonomy and teaching her early that harm could be dismissed rather than confronted. This kind of attachment trauma profoundly shapes how someone later understands danger, trust, and intimacy. When the adults meant to protect a child respond with denial or indifference, the resulting psychological wounds can make abuse in adulthood harder to recognize—and far harder to escape.

For those raised in stable, loving homes, this connection may seem foreign. But many people grow up in families where violence is normalized, minimized, or treated as something to be endured quietly. That early conditioning often sets the stage for later harm.

A History of Violence

When Banfield met Wortman, she did not see a “monster.” She saw a charismatic, charming, financially successful man—someone who appeared capable of offering stability and love. This, too, follows a familiar pattern. Survivors of childhood trauma often gravitate toward forms of attachment that feel recognizable, even when they are dangerous. By the time the violence escalates, many are already deeply embedded in a cycle that ensnares millions of women worldwide.

It is also critical to acknowledge that Wortman himself was abused as a child and grew up in a family with a long history of violence—not as an excuse, but as part of a fuller picture of how cycles of violence reproduce across generations. Inquiry findings based on interviews with relatives and acquaintances documented violence stretching back at least four generations. Family members told police that his father forced him to engage in violent acts as a child, and that both his father and grandfather were physically abusive and threatening within the household. Allegations included severe neglect, intimidation, and even a gun being held to his head.

Understanding this history does not diminish Wortman’s responsibility for his crimes, but it reinforces a necessary truth: violence is rarely born in a vacuum. If we are serious about breaking cycles of harm in Nova Scotia, we must confront not only individual acts but the conditions that allow violence to persist, escalate, and be ignored.

Violence Isn’t Rare in Nova Scotia. It’s Endemic.

This is not an ​​exaggeration; the data is clear. Nova Scotia consistently reports among the highest rates of self-reported intimate partner violence in Canada, with police-reported IPV often outpacing that of many other provinces.

Nationally, police recorded more than 123,000 victims of intimate partner violence in 2023, the vast majority of them women and girls. Intimate partner homicides remain alarmingly common: 67 people were killed by a current or former partner that year, with women accounting for roughly 73 percent of victims. Domestic homicides represent about one in five murders in Canada.

These are not rare anomalies. They are pervasive patterns of violence affecting thousands of families every year—often with deadly consequences.

A Monster of Our Own Making

We cannot simply label Wortman a “monster” and walk away with the comforting illusion that the problem has been contained. Violence is not primarily the product of rare, unknowable villains. It is cultivated in cultures that minimize harm, dismiss survivors, and treat abuse as private business rather than collective responsibility.

We have built that culture in Nova Scotia.

Wortman was known in his community as abusive, controlling, and unstable. He stockpiled weapons. He possessed a replica police vehicle. A neighbour reported him to the police. And yet, meaningful intervention never came. The warning signs were visible; the response from police and authorities was negligible.

Too many people here still believe that something like this “couldn’t happen” in Nova Scotia. But when high rates of IPV combine with silence, denial, and institutional inaction, tragedy is not shocking—it is predictable.

I am saying this plainly: if nothing changes, it will happen again.

We cannot continue pretending these are isolated incidents. We cannot keep casting blame on singular individuals, like Lisa Banfield, while absolving ourselves of collective accountability. If we want real change, we must confront the deeper cultural and structural failures: the silencing of survivors, the normalization of abuse, the reflex to look away.

Until we do that work, until we acknowledge our complicity, apologize where harm was inflicted, and commit to real systemic reform, nothing will fundamentally change.

Gabriel Wortman was not an aberration. He was a monster of our own making.

How many more people must suffer before we treat intimate partner violence and gender-based violence as the crises they are?

I, for one, no longer want to pretend.