I Survived Canada’s Deadliest Mass Shooter. Then I Had to Prove It

ON APRIL 18, 2020, Gabriel Wortman murdered thirteen of his neighbours in Portapique, Nova Scotia. He hid in a nearby field overnight and killed nine more people the following day, including a pregnant woman. He died later that morning, after RCMP officers fired on him at a gas station.

Lisa Banfield, Wortman’s common-law partner, endured years of violence from Wortman. She escaped with her life the night his shooting rampage began. Six months following the murders, Banfield went back to Portapique and walked officers through her last moments with Wortman.

Her account of that fraught return is excerpted below from her book The First Survivor: Life with Canada’s Deadliest Mass Shooter. She wrote the book hoping to inspire greater compassion for women in abusive relationships, including among women who are themselves experiencing abuse.

I WAS DETERMINED to return to Portapique before the snow fell. Anyone who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder will understand why returning to the scene would trigger and heighten the flashbacks, nightmares, and panic attacks I experienced that summer. I knew it would be gruelling and awful, but I felt I needed to go. My sisters Janice and Maureen questioned if I was ready, concerned it would be too much for me. My clinical therapist warned it was risky for my mental health. Despite their cautions, I desperately wanted to find proof of my experience.

Staff Sergeant Greg Vardy told me he had experience helping victims get closure this way and would join me. Vardy was a “truth verification” expert with the RCMP, with thirty years’ experience assisting in criminal investigations to help determine the truthfulness of witnesses, suspects, and victims. The RCMP were facing intense scrutiny from the families of Gabriel’s twenty-two victims and an unborn child. They demanded an inquiry into the mishandling of the search for Gabriel during his rampage and failure to notify people sooner that he was posing as an RCMP officer.

While my sisters paid close attention to the storm swirling around the police force’s actions on that April weekend, I avoided the news. In my state, stories of the families’ despair distressed me, as I felt such deep sympathy and pain for all they were going through. Survivor’s guilt haunted me. Federal Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Bill Blair finally announced the decision to hold a joint public inquiry with the provincial government. I did not have a clue what it would mean for me.

By now, I had given the RCMP complete access to my cellphone, which contained thousands of photos of Gabriel, his cars, and emails, exposing the intimate details of our life. I told them about the cash buried under the deck of the cottage. I drew them maps and told them where my coat might be along the ditch where I ran from Gabriel. I prayed to God we would find my jacket, the tie from my wrist, the tree hollow where I hid, and the rock that I held for protection during the night. They had already found my necklace (I didn’t even realize it was missing) and sneakers, but there were growing accusations and false stories that I was an accomplice and that I didn’t escape and hide in the woods that night.

I had to find that tree; I had to find my puffy jacket; I needed to show them the truth. I know what I lived through, what I survived. We called Vardy, who set the date.

WHEN I MET HIM nineteen years earlier, Gabriel didn’t look at all like the dark-haired, rugged men that I typically found attractive. At six foot three, he hovered over me, and his twinkling bluish-green eyes made my breath flutter. Maureen joked: “He’s not your type.” But there was something about his charm that kept us talking the night we met at a club in downtown Halifax in 2001. For the first time since my ex-husband, I gave out my phone number in hopes he would call me.

Our relationship soon took off. We were the same age, liked the same music, and had the same work ethic. Gabriel owned two denture clinics. He was clearly a go-getter and made things happen. I liked that he was driven and successful. We loved spending time together, and that made me feel special. He made me his priority, and I wasn’t used to that. He surprised me with thoughtful gifts and messages all the time. He seemed like the perfect guy.

Smitten, I moved in with Gabriel within three months of our first date. Initially, I didn’t notice how easily I conceded to his wants and needs. But he loved having me all to himself and didn’t embrace our large family functions. He complained about how often I went to see my family. He suggested I visit them all in one day instead of spreading it throughout the week. I didn’t like that, but somehow, he had a way of convincing me his ideas were right, and if I questioned them, I was made to feel stupid. He got irritable when I stayed away from home too long, and I didn’t want to have to deal with his moodiness. I became good at making excuses for why I couldn’t see my family as much. It just wasn’t worth the tension I felt.

Gabriel’s moods became increasingly extreme. He could morph from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde in a split second.

During our first five years together, I became a shadow of myself: discounting my beliefs, my morals, and my own thoughts. Gabriel commented on what I wore, my hair, what I ate, where I went, what I drove, who I saw. But his grip happened so gradually, I didn’t recognize the hold he had over me. I’m embarrassed to share the time Gabriel told me to get a nose job to get rid of a small bump. He booked an appointment for a rhinoplasty. When I got to the office, the surgeon said, “There’s nothing wrong with your nose.” I agreed, but I pushed my thoughts aside and pandered to Gabriel’s wishes.

Gabriel’s moods became increasingly extreme. He could morph from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde in a split second, especially when he drank. There would be no reason for it: he’d just lose it, and I would try to calm him down. A cycle I would come to know well.

Like many women in abusive relationships, I was in total denial of my reality. Survival meant focusing on the here and now. I learned to compartmentalize my fear of Gabriel and to smile as though my life behind closed doors didn’t exist. My optimism that things would get better blurred life’s truth. They say love is blind. Although there were periods when Gabriel wasn’t physically violent, his emotional abuse and coercive control worsened each year.

One summer day, Gabriel and a few friends were working on renovations on our cottage in Portapique. They were all outside when Gabriel came into my bedroom. He’d had a few drinks that led to a fight about something that escalated. Suddenly, he jumped on top of me and started choking me. I screamed at him to stop.

I escaped through my bedroom’s patio door to our neighbours, Brenda and George Forbes. They had retired from the military and moved to Portapique in 2002. We socialized a bit and they came to our cottage for drinks occasionally. More than once, Brenda had seen Gabriel grab my arm and end our visit abruptly.

On this day, Brenda could see my heightened distress. “We need to call the police,” she urged.

But I pleaded with her not to: “It would only make it worse.” I wanted help, but the thought of what could happen terrified me into silence—and, in turn, silenced others. I felt confused and trapped. “I’ve gotta go back. I don’t know what he’ll do if he finds out I left.” By this time, I was hyperventilating.

I ran to Brenda for help another time. Gabriel was in a rage about something and blocked my car in the driveway so I couldn’t leave. Brenda tried once again to get me to call the police, a shelter, or other support. But I couldn’t. I was just too afraid to involve any authorities. I learned later that Brenda had reported Gabriel to the RCMP. No one followed up with her, so nothing came of it. But Gabriel had it in for her after that and would taunt her to such an extreme that she feared for her life as well. The Forbeses eventually sold their place in Portapique and moved away.

By now, we had fallen into a pattern typical of abusive relationships. I would try to calm Gabriel down when he got violent. I would threaten to leave for good, but then I would go back with him again and again. I wanted to leave so many times, but Gabriel knew how to keep me there.

“I know where your family lives,” he would warn. I couldn’t take the chance he was bluffing.

BY MID-MARCH 2020, before we had heard of the first confirmed COVID-19 cases in Nova Scotia, we were hunkering down in Portapique, where we hoped we would be safe from catching the virus.

Gabriel began to track every news channel as his paranoia about COVID intensified. His already abnormal behaviour became more bizarre. Since we built the cottage, Gabriel kept a fireproof safe there. We had collected over $200,000 in it, with thousands more in an orange tin at the warehouse. I know that for many people, this is hard to believe: Who keeps that kind of cash on hand? But Gabriel trusted no one and was extremely paranoid of government and banking institutions.

During my weekly trips to Costco in Dartmouth, he wanted me to buy extra canned goods, flour, rice, water, and meat. We had six extra freezers at the warehouse to stockpile the food. It seemed over the top to me, but that is what it was like living with Gabriel.

I prayed our upcoming anniversary would offer a reset. I could not have been more wrong.

Gabriel always owned guns; he loved them and collected many throughout his life. Although I feared guns, Gabriel insisted on having them so he could protect us. He kept moving them to different places in the house and warehouse. On my last trip to Dartmouth, he asked me to get more bullets for him. “Why do you need more bullets?” I said. “You have lots of bullets. You don’t need any more.”

“I just want them, Lisa. I told you things are getting bad. Get them.”

I wanted him off my back, so I asked my brother and my brother-in-law, who were hunters, if they would get them for Gabriel.

I prayed our upcoming anniversary would offer a reset from his obsessive paranoia about the pandemic. I could not have been more wrong.

ON OCTOBER 23, 2020, I returned to Portapique for the first and last time since April 19 of that year. It was a crisp, clear, cool morning. Maureen and Janice drove me.

We barely spoke during the ninety-minute ride from Dartmouth. I stared through the window at the places on the highway route where Gabriel had shot and killed innocent people. I flinched as we drove by the truck stop in Enfield, where he died. I struggled to keep it together as we passed the Shubenacadie intersection where Constable Heidi Stevenson bravely tried to stop him after he rammed her car head-on. She and bystander Joey Webber were among his last victims. Gabriel shot Constable Chad Morrison, who mistook Gabriel’s replica car for Heidi’s. He managed to drive away and survived his injury. Gina Goulet, a denturist Gabriel knew, was the last victim, shot in her Shubenacadie home along with her beloved dog.

It was chilling to think about where he’d been and what he did mile after mile, unstopped. Even scarier to know that he returned to some of the places we had visited on the Saturday before the massacre.

My sisters and I had agreed to first meet Vardy at Masstown Market, a fifty-year-old fruit stand with fresh produce and baked goods, before heading to Portapique. I naively thought he was there to help me cope with revisiting the site. But I felt like he ambushed me. He pulled in next to us, and then another van with a team of people—including a videographer and Corporal Gerry Rose-Berthiaume—parked on the other side of us. I was visibly shaken. I didn’t know any of them except Vardy. They introduced themselves and said that they were there to capture the experience in hopes of learning anything new.

“Who is this for? Will this be made public?” Maureen asked directly.

Vardy said he couldn’t promise that, but made me feel like he’d protect me.

“We think it will help to find out more about how this happened,” he said.

Maureen noticed my reaction and almost called it off. “With all due respect, I don’t care what you need. This is about Lisa and her mental health.” Maureen turned to me: “Lisa, you’re shaking. Are you sure you still want to do this?”

We had come all this way, and the thought of coming back at another time was more than I could bear. Besides, they were all standing there waiting for me. “Yeah,” I said meekly.

We got into our separate vehicles and made our way to the entrance to our warehouse. Driving by the burnt homes of neighbours, now vacant lots, where they had been murdered, sickened me. I was shocked at what I was seeing. My imagination spun, and flashbacks of that awful night flooded my brain. Perhaps I wasn’t ready?

The gate to the warehouse driveway was closed and locked, so we walked around it. No one else was there. It was an eerily quiet fall day. We stood in front of what used to be our large warehouse, now only a vacant lot with rocks and the remnants of an industrial-sized foundation. They asked that I begin where the argument took place on our anniversary evening.

A woman put some kind of mic pack on me while a man held the video camera on us. They wouldn’t let my sisters near me for support and told them to stay outside of the camera’s view. I didn’t know it at the time, but my heart-wrenching re-enactment would eventually be posted for the entire world to see.

They pressed record; I looked into the camera and said my name.

Rose-Berthiaume stated the time and noted that my sisters and Vardy, the polygrapher, were also present. “This is a re-enactment today. I want to get as much detail as possible. You said it started here at the warehouse.”

“Don’t leave anything out” had become their mantra. I now realize they were truth-checking my statement. We stood under blue, sunny skies, walking on the gravel yard near the empty, flattened slab of concrete of our warehouse. I pointed to where Gabriel had cleaned the Jeep and where all our other vehicles were parked that night.

We talked as we walked through the woods. I don’t remember what I said until we emerged and I saw our property with nothing but the driveway signposts. Our cottage was gone; nothing but the unobstructed view of the Bay of Fundy remained. I bawled. Everything just hit me. The place I helped grow into a home, now levelled. I stared at the leaves on the ground where our house once stood. I felt inconsolable and failed to compose myself.

I wished I had time to just be there, by myself, feel my grief, feel the loss of it all. I had to set aside my needs for others.

“I need a minute,” my voice cracked in distress. I gasped. I couldn’t believe it was all gone. I couldn’t stop crying. “Sorry,” I kept saying. I had to stop several times just to catch my breath. I felt like I was out of my body. It had been six months, and I crumbled.

“Take your time, Lisa, you’re doing awesome,” Rose-Berthiaume said.

I just wanted to run. I couldn’t focus on what he was asking. I wanted to wail and scream. I wished I had time to just be there, by myself, feel my grief, feel the loss of it all. Once again, I had to set aside my needs for others; they were all there waiting for me, taping me. I had to get it together. All the while, my sisters weren’t able to console me.

I went back over what I had told Vardy the day after I was rescued, repeating all that I remembered about being beaten and dragged through the cottage before Gabriel lit it on fire. Then his threats about burning down the warehouse and the clinic in Dartmouth. In those moments, every emotion was relived. I felt dizzy, recalling my terror that night.

Emerging from the path, Rose-Berthiaume asked, “Where do you go when you get back here?”

“Gabriel took me over here,” I said, gesturing to the entrance of where our warehouse used to be. I told them what Gabriel did next with jerry cans of gasoline: “I’m watching him as he is telling me not to move. First, he threw it on his tractor and his truck that was parked by it, then doused all the other vehicles parked in the yard.”

“We went into the warehouse, and he had it locked up like we always did at the end of the night. If he planned on doing this, why would he lock everything up and clean his Jeep? He unbolted the warehouse and, in my mind, I’m thinking, What if I just turn around and run, but he was so close to me I wouldn’t have a chance to get out of his grasp.

“Inside, he went over to where he kept the handcuffs by the bar. He put them on my left hand, and he said, ‘Give me your other hand.’ At this point, I was close to the bar, and I said, ‘Gabriel, it doesn’t have to be like this.’ That’s when he told me we were going to the clinic and then to Maureen’s. I thought, If you are going to kill me, just do it, so I bent to my knees and covered my face.”

The corporal told me to take my time. I grabbed his arm to show him how Gabriel grabbed me and threw me into the back seat of the car. Gabriel then went to the bar and got guns and more bullets before he returned and threw them on the front seat of the replica police car.

Going through this process was disturbing. Having to repeatedly retell the worst day of my life seemed revictimizing, but they wanted me to tell it again, this time on camera. I obliged. It’s an ongoing nightmare I cannot forget.

“I remembered getting out of the police car and how I opened the door, and all I was thinking was, Just run.” I became distraught, fretting, once again, about the what-ifs: “Why I didn’t . . . Think about what I could have done.”

The corporal tried to calm me. “You were trying to survive,” he said empathetically.

I retraced my movements toward a small cottage beside ours. There was a thin bank of trees between our properties, then a shallow ditch. I led Rose-Berthiaume across the road, trying to find the place where I noticed a truck. It looked different because of the seasonal change, and so many of the familiar buildings were gone, burned down. He seemed to be leading me in a direction in front of a house. I knew I didn’t go this way. I became frustrated. I followed him anyway. When we got to the building, I told him again I wasn’t here.

I walked back to where we started. I remembered feeling something soft beneath my feet that night, so I looked for a spot on the property that seemed familiar. I continued to describe seeing a truck: “I saw a light on in a house, but Gabriel was after me. I didn’t want to get anyone else involved, so I headed directly to the truck. It was cold, so I jumped in the back seat of the truck. I felt around for something warm, but there were only tools and a worker’s neon vest.”

I was disoriented that night and felt just as confused now, trying to picture where I was at that moment. We returned to the road, and I tried to find where I had entered the deep woods. Rose-Berthiaume asked my sisters to stay with Vardy while he and the film crew followed me into the woods. Maureen ignored him and came anyway. I was so grateful, as I needed support reliving this.

As we headed deep into the woods, the sun shone through the forest of fir trees and hardwoods. Moss, twigs, and fallen branches covered the ground. Because of the density of so many thin trees, the film crew were having technical troubles with the sound. At one point, my battery pack went dead, and they had to replace it. I could tell the corporal was getting frustrated. “We’ve been in these woods a long time. Are you sure you came this far?” I became exasperated too. I had no idea how far I had crawled that night, but I wasn’t leaving until we found it.

“Oh my gosh, it was a huge tree that was down, with a hole that I buried my body in,” I said, looking and looking deeper into the forest. “If I can just find that tree—sorry for taking you through all of this,” I told him. I was praying to God, Please help me find it; I need to find it.

“I think we should turn back. It’s really hard to move through. It’s OK, Lisa,” Rose-Berthiaume said as he started turning back.

This was my only chance to show them proof of what happened that night. Even Leon, our neighbour who helped me, had fuelled the conspiracy theorists by doubting whether I had hidden in the woods. I looked to my left and pointed to an overturned trunk. “This is it. Right here.” I walked around to its opening. “And the rock, it’s here. Yes, this is the rock.” I was exhausted yet elated. The videographer kept taping while I saw Maureen taking her own pictures.

“I was just praying to God if I could make it to the morning, I could find my bearings in the daylight and get help.”

“This is where I heard the whistling, and I remember seeing a fire over here”—I pointed in the distance—“and hearing the two guys, and I probably got as far as here and dropped to my knees when I heard, ‘Hey boys,’ then bang, bang.”

“What made you come out eventually?” Rose-Berthiaume asked.

“I was just praying to God if I could make it to the morning, I could find my bearings in the daylight and get help.”

I felt a huge wash of relief as we emerged from the woods. Maureen and I looked at each other. I did it. I found the tree and the rock.

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We made our way back to the road. I found Leon’s house, where I took refuge that morning. At one point, a car approached, so I hid behind the corporal in case the driver recognized my face. Hiding had become part of my new life.

“Is there anything we haven’t talked about or you haven’t told us about that night?” he asked.

“I don’t remember anything new,” I said, staring at Leon’s house.

“You did a great job here today,” he said. “Reach out to Greg or I when the stress goes down if you remember anything else.”

They took off my microphone and drove off.

Finally, my sisters and I were alone.

Within minutes, Vardy called us to say that a news vehicle was at the end of the road. This was shocking to all of us, as we had been in the area for a couple of hours without anyone around. It was only after the RCMP finished their filming that the media showed up.

We decided to walk through the woods back to the seaside deck of our cottage, to avoid being seen. I knew this would be the last time to say goodbye to my life in Portapique. My therapist suggested I write Gabriel a letter and say everything I needed to for closure.

Maureen brought sage and wanted to have a brief smudging ceremony. She lit it, blew out the flame, and fanned its essence into the air and around each of us. We prayed for peace, purity, and the promise of healing for everyone hurt by Gabriel’s actions. We hugged, cried, and exhaled in unison. I asked Maureen and Janice to leave me for a moment so I could say goodbye in private. They walked to the bottom of our rock wall beneath the bayside deck as I sat on the steps by myself.

Overlooking the low-tide beach, I prepared myself to read my letter to him.

As I prayed, I heard this weird noise. I looked up to see an object hovering over my head. I can still hear the buzzing sound in my head. I screamed to my sisters.

“It’s a drone,” I yelled. Janice got to me first.

Maureen scaled the rock wall. It followed us. We ran past the cottage ruins, across the road, and into the woods. We could hear it still above us as we huddled together under the cover of trees. I felt threatened, scared, and equally angry at the same time. How could this be happening? My private moment of healing was stolen.

I HAD NO IDEA how awful it was going to get for me and my family. I, along with my brother and brother-in-law, was charged under Section 101 of the Criminal Code for transferring ammunition.

Our family had fully co-operated with the RCMP. They interviewed every member about their relationship with Gabriel and quizzed us on how he got the guns and ammunition. Our lawyer said it was highly unusual to lay charges, particularly when the family was fully transparent and co-operative during the entirety of the investigation. It confused us even more as the RCMP publicly stated we had no involvement or culpability in Gabriel’s criminal actions.

Some people recognized that the charges were a timely deflection from the storm that had engulfed the RCMP. To me, it was more proof that as an abused woman, I couldn’t trust the police to help keep me and my family safe.

It took months for the autopsy report to be released to me. As documented, Gabriel shot himself in the head within minutes of two officers firing on him. By mere and blessed coincidence, the RCMP officers were gassing up at Enfield’s Irving Big Stop and noticed him at another pump. They surrounded him and shot him multiple times. This took place thirty-five kilometres from Maureen’s house. The fact that this mass murderer’s capture was a fluke is incomprehensible. To this day, I cannot fathom why, during this manhunt, a blockade was not set up on all the series highways and why the public wasn’t explicitly warned.

There was no funeral. Gabriel always told me that he wanted his body to be buried in a Hudson’s Bay wool blanket in the Portapique Cemetery, adjacent to our cottage. He had bought his plot soon after we renovated our cottage. In the end, after he murdered so many innocent people, I could never honour his wishes. Instead, he was cremated and would never return to Portapique again.

“I don’t want an obituary,” he told me several times. He also didn’t want his parents to know if anything should ever happen to him. But I thought, as a parent, I would want closure. After taking some remains for myself, I sent his boxed ashes to his parents in New Brunswick with a letter asking them never to contact me.

Adapted from The First Survivor: Life with Canada’s Deadliest Mass Shooter. Copyright © 2026, Lisa Banfield with Sherri Aikenhead and Maureen Banfield. Reprinted by permission of Sutherland House Books.