Canada's worst mass murder, this weekend in rural Nova Scotia

I've been pondering the relevance of rurality to this horrendous event since news of it broke on Sunday, and I've not yet reached any clear conclusions.  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered these thoughts on the impact on Nova Scotia, population 923,598 because of the high density of acquaintanceship there, as reported by the Associated Press:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau noted how close-knit the small province of Nova Scotia is. 

“The vast majority of Nova Scotians will have a direct link with one or more of the victims. The entire province and country is grieving right now as we come to grips with something that is unimaginable,” Trudeau told a news conference.

Nova Scotia's population is small, but it is the second most densely province in Canada, which of course still doesn't make it very densely populated.

It seems the perpetrator first killed his former paramour and her new boyfriend, but that's not a particularly rural phenomenon.  The killing spree the murderer went on after that was arguably not mitigated, not stopped because of the relative lack of police presence.  I have written previously of the government/law/the state's struggle to adequately monitor large rural swaths, rendering them relatively lawless. Those are the sorts of swaths of territory that the killer covered as he murdered the next 20 people, apparently disguised as a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which is itself extraordinary.  The crimes took place in five different population clusters or villages, at 16 different locations.

Here's the New York Times report from today, and here is the NPR story. 

An excerpt from the NPR story follows:

During the attack, which lasted 12 hours, the suspect, identified as Gabriel Wortman, 51, wore an authentic RCMP uniform and one of the cars he used "was a very real look-alike" for a police vehicle, authorities said. 

* * * 

Since the attacks, questions have arisen over why the RCMP used Twitter to alert the public to the manhunt for the shooter, instead of activating the province-wide Alert Ready system. 

The warning system - which blares a siren by cellphone - was last used April 10 to warn people to stay home during the Easter weekend to prevent spread of the coronavirus, according to Canada's National Post newspaper. 

At a news conference on Monday, Chief Superintendent Leather said the force believed that Twitter was "a superior way to communicate" but will take a close look at that reasoning as part of its investigation.

The failure to use the warning system reminds me of recent reports of out New Zealand, where authorities chose to use the noisy and abrupt warning system to catch residents' attention re: the coronavirus shelter-in-place order.

The New York Times story provides profiles of many of those killed and focuses on the struggle to achieve socially-distanced funerals for the nearly two dozen who died this past weekend.