In memory of Clinton Ellison, as well as all victims and survivors of the worst mass shooting in Canadian history.
I know that we’re all familiar with the uprise of mass killings and shootings and how they’re portrayed in the media. As a Canadian, I feel our experience with the crisis is somewhat unique. We hear a lot about it happening in the states, how “this never really happens here,” and how well we’d be prepared to deal with something as serious as a shooting.
I feel like a lot of people don’t even know about the Portapique massacre..and if they do recognize it, they don’t know about any of the details. I can’t fault anyone for that because the reality is our government/media didn’t release a lot of information about it, (on purpose) despite it being the deadliest shooting our country has seen. The number of victims in a massacre is always highlighted but their stories, the survivors, and the loved ones of victims and survivors are rarely remembered. In this write up, I want to share a bit about the event itself and its most recent victim.
Im calling the killer G, because his full name doesn’t deserve to even be typed out. His rampage started on April 18, 2020, after he brutally assaulted his girlfriend. After she escaped the house and hid in the woods, he set fires to his and other surrounding houses, put on what looked like a real RCMP uniform, got into his replica RCMP cruiser he had built himself and started driving through Portapique, Nova Scotia. Over the next 13 hours he murdered 22 people across multiple communities in Nova Scotia, burning random homes, targeting some people he knew and others who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He travelled the highways of the province posing as a police officer while the public had little idea what was happening.
Clinton Ellison and his brother Corrie were visiting their father in Portapique that night when they heard gunfire and saw flames nearby. Corrie went outside to see what was happening and didn’t come back. Clinton went out looking for him, found his brother dead on the road, and then spent hours hiding in the woods while gunshots, explosions, and fires echoed around him. From what I’ve gathered, I believe Corrie was the 13th person killed.
The massacre finally ended at the gas station in Enfield over 13 hours later, at a place almost every Atlantic Canadian has stopped at while travelling Highway 102. He was cornered by police, shot and killed. G dying left even more questions unanswered than there already were.
I live in Fredericton, New Brunswick which is a few hours from everything that happened. On May 19, 2026, my workplace went into a lockdown. We later found out there was an incident with a gun down the street. It soon came out that someone had shot themself in a car in the parking lot. This person was 52 year old Clinton Ellison, who has been suffering with this trauma with such little help for the past 6 years. He found his brother murdered, hid in the woods to survive as his neighborhood burned and people were killed around him. He’s been suffering with PTSD since. I still don’t know what brought him to Fredericton or what brought him to that drugstore parking lot on that afternoon.
Tonight I rewatched the Fifth Estate’s episode on what happened : 13 deadly hours, and I’ve been heartbroken and so pissed off since. I watched it when it was made but I think it was so horrendous I did my best to block it out or something. I can’t believe what these people, their families and their community went through. I can’t believe how badly the RCMP fucked up. And I can’t believe how little we talk about this given how life changing and shocking it was for everyone.
As I was researching about Clinton’s passing, I found this extremely brief quote in only 1 article:
“Leon Joudrey also survived the 2020 mass shooting and died by suicide in 2022 after struggling with his own mental health.” *why in the hell don’t we talk about this???*
This post is longer than I intended it to be, and I could write SO much more. I am going to post the link to the Fifth Estate episode in the comments. I highly encourage everyone to watch, to learn about the families impacted and how horribly it was handled by the province.
Rest in peace, Clinton.
Rest in peace, Leon.
Rest in peace:
Corrie Ellison — 42
Greg Blair — 51
Jamie Blair — 40
Peter Bond — 66
Joy Bond — 76
Dawn Gulenchyn — 53
Frank Gulenchyn — 59
Lisa McCully — 52
Jolene Oliver — 39
Aaron Tuck — 45
Emily Tuck — 17
John Zahl — 72
Elizabeth Thomas — 59
Lillian Campbell — 65
Heather O’Brien — 55
Alanna Jenkins — 34
Sean McLeod — 52
Gina Goulet — 54
Joey Webber — 36
Tom Bagley — 61
Kristen Beaton — 33, and her unborn son.
Heidi Stevenson (RCMP) — 45