Sam Macdonald is very familiar with rural Nova Scotia. He has lived there and worked there for much of his life.
Macdonald, who worked for the Estevan Mercury as a reporter from July 2015 to April 2017, has lived in several rural Nova Scotia communities in his life, most recently Stellarton, which is about an hour east of Portapique, the tiny coastal community where Gabriel Wortman, a 51-year-old denturist, started a rampage that would leave 22 people dead in several communities and others injured.
Macdonald didn’t know any of the victims, but he has a “small world” connection to Wortman.
“He was literally 30 seconds down the street from where my brother used to live … in Dartmouth.”
Macdonald doesn’t recall ever meeting Wortman, but he remembers driving and walking past the office, which he said was really hard to miss because of its “big, ugly, imitation teeth on the side of it” that were used to promote the business.
Those teeth were removed following a petition in the days following the shooting.
Macdonald pointed out that while there are differences between rural Nova Scotia and rural Saskatchewan, both regions are known for being peaceful areas, and for having two degrees of separation.
“I know people who know people who are part of the families and that kind of thing,” said Macdonald.
There was a lot of shock regarding the incident. People he knows have been reeling, especially those who knew the victims.
“That part of Nova Scotia is very quiet, and you wouldn’t think something like that would ever happen. Everybody there seems to know somebody who knows somebody.”
This week’s edition of the Mercury will have more on this story.
