The Current - Lisa Banfield tells her story of surviving violent abuse, and Canada's worst mass shooting

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

Lisa Banfield was the common-law wife of the Nova Scotia shooter. She has now released a book; The First Survivor: Life With Canada's Deadliest Mass Shooter. We talk to her about the years of intimate partner violence that she suffered and what she wants people to understand about the cycle of violence. And she responds to some of the victims' families — who have expressed anger about her decision to tell her story.

Okay, I don't know if you've been noticing this or not, but one of the more surprising trends in pop culture right now is betting. Like if you were watching the Golden Gloves, for example, betting company Polymarket, they ran this ticker of popular bets on who would win the award, like it was like right there on the screen. I'm Alameh Abdul Mahmoud, and this week on commotion, I talked to some culture critics about why betting feels like it's everywhere, why everyone wants to take a gamble on who's going to win an Oscar, on who's going to be the most Google celebrity of the year. You can find and follow commotion on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. In April of 2020, Gabriel Wartman committed the worst mass shooting in Canadian history, killing 22 people in and around the small community of Portepec, Nova Scotia.

The story of that night, and the next morning, is about what Wartman did, how he committed those horrible murders, and why it took so long to stop the carnage. It is the story of families who lost loved ones. and the grief they will carry forever. And the story of a community that was traumatized. But there is another story as well. It is the story of Lisa Banfield. She is the woman who was Wartman's common-law wife,

his partner of 19 years. She's the woman who hid beaten and shivering in the woods near their house when Warpman drove away looking for his victims. Now Lisa Banfield is telling her story in a memoir called The First Survivor, Life with Canada's deadliest mass shooter. She wrote it in collaboration with her sister, and with the journalist Sherry Aikenhead.

Lisa Banfield joins me in our Halifax studio. And just a warning, this conversation is about intimate partner violence. Lisa Banfield, good morning. Good morning. How are you doing? I'm doing good. I'm doing better. Better.

For sure. Yeah. Why did you want it? This is a hell of a story. Why did you want to tell your story now? Because I feel things that happen behind closed doors need to be told, abuse. People need to know that things. that go on. Sorry.

Yeah. It's hard to talk about even now. It is. But it's something I know I need to do for people that don't have a voice. I feel like I could be a voice. I just, I want people to know that they're not alone, and they deserve to be heard, and I just want to help it any way I can. You met Gabriel Warpman more than two decades ago.

Tell me about who he was. and what attracted you to him? In the book that you say that in some ways, he seemed like the perfect guy. Yeah, when I first met him at a bar, and he approached me. He seemed like a really nice guy. He just seemed like the perfect man.

Like he was kind. He had kind eyes. He seemed gentle at the time. You know, he was compassionate. He was loving towards me. He made me feel special. But over time, that changed. What did your family think of him when they met him the first time?

They didn't think he was my type. My mom didn't really care for him. And she never said why, but other than she felt like she didn't trust him. And I didn't understand that because I didn't feel any reason why she wouldn't trust him. They just thought he was okay in the beginning. You read in the book that in the early years together, I felt more confident voicing my opinion. and he was gentler in disregarding it.

How did that change over time? In the beginning, he made me feel very comfortable that I could speak my truth or, you know, I could say things. And then over time, he made me feel that I didn't have a voice and I didn't matter. And his opinion was what it should be. Over time, he would say, repetitively, like, just do what I say. Don't think about it.

It's like, I have a brain of my own. I can think on my own. but he would make me feel very insecure that I couldn't speak. He was really controlling over you. I mean, he did things like he made you get a nose job or told you to get a nose job. He wanted to know who you were talking to on the phone. The business that you worked in together was registered solely under his name, and he wanted to sign some piece of paper saying that you had no claim over his assets or anything like that.

I don't know if it was a test to see if I would sign it. And I did, obviously, but it obviously wasn't a legal document. In the book, you say, during the first five years together, I became shadow of myself, discounting my beliefs, my morals, my own thoughts. How do you understand what was going on then? I couldn't say what I would want to say to anybody without going through him. Times, for instance, I would want to go see my family, and he would dictate as to how many times I could go visit my family or what, you talking about with your family? Like it was a constant, it was almost like I had to make

up lies as to why I wanted to see my family or do anything outside of him. I felt like I was being isolated away from my family. And in the beginning, Matt, like, I enjoyed the fact that he wanted my company and wanted to be with me all the time. And showered you with love and gifts. Like, who doesn't, you know, who doesn't love that? But at the same time, for me, It slowly changed in a way that, for instance, I had my niece and nephew over and they were just young under five. And I knew he didn't particularly like kids. So I brought them upstairs in the bedroom and just to hang out with them. And within five minutes, he comes up and he says, the party's over.

And I'm like, what do you mean, the party's over? And he's like, the kid's got to go. And I'm like, they're not bothering you. If you don't like it, you go back downstairs. But from that point on, I never had the kids over. If I wanted to see the kids, I'd have to go to their place. This is what the mass casualty commission later called course of control. What does that phrase mean to you?

Did I feel like he was controlling you? Absolutely, yeah. And as much as I knew what was happening, it's almost like I couldn't control it. And it was just easier to just do what he wants because the aftermath, just wouldn't be worth it to me. And the stress of it wouldn't be worth it to me. There's a chapter in the book that's about that aftermath. It's called Love is Blind.

And it says when it was good, it was great. But when it was bad, it was brutal. Absolutely. There's a moment at a cottage party that you went to out of town. And you get into an argument about who is going to drive home. What happened that day? An employee that he just hired was having a party. And he wanted to go up there.

And I said, the only way I would go up. is if you drive because I'd like to have a few drinks. I'm always a designated driver. He said he would, and I said, but I'm coming home. I don't want to spend the night there. So we drive up there, and within a half hour of us being there, I could see that he's drinking. So I just said to him, you know, you're drinking.

He goes, well, we can just stay the night. And I said, we've already had this conversation. I'm not spending the night. If you want to stay, you stay, but I'm going. And then he turned to his employee and say, see what I've got to put up with? And I was like, you don't have to put up anything. I'm leaving. And I got in the vehicle because I had to drive and he jumped in and he's just yelling and screaming like, you know, why do you have to be such a bitch? Sorry. You know,

you have to ruin everything and he's just going on and I'm driving and I shouldn't be driving because I've been drinking and all of a sudden he hits me in the face and I'm stunned because I've never been hit before and then he hits me again. And it's so weird because I had a flashback of watching Oprah Winfrey, about you never go to the next destination. Why that went in my head, I don't know. But at that point, I just opened the door and started running. And I could hear the breath and the pounding behind me coming for me.

And he grabbed me, and that's when he just started punching me, and grabbing me by the hair and he's punching me. And I'm just trying to defend the blows to my head. And once I got back out on the road, I just started screaming. And two people on four-wheelers had shone their lights on, and he saw that the lights were on him, and he let me go, and he just went back to the party. Did you think about, that's an awful thing to go through.

Did you think about calling the police after that? No, because after that, I remember coming out of the woods and a police car going by, and people there where I was standing was like, do you want to talk to them? And I said, no, I don't want to get anybody in trouble. I just want to go home. Because in my mind, I was done. I wouldn't be with somebody like that.

How much did violence permeate your day-to-day life as your relationship went on with him? It was a lot. And mad, it's so weird because when I started writing my journals at a young age, I wrote it to get out whatever I was feeling. I never revisited my journals. And it wasn't until this incident that I had. had to read these journals. And thinking back, I'm thinking, oh, it only happened once or twice.

But reading it and seeing it on paper, it was like I blocked so much out. And I think I don't even know how I stayed as long as I stayed. Staying is a really important part of the story. I mean, there's a vacation that you take to Cuba with your in-laws that explodes in violence. Gabriel, Warpment becomes violent with his dad, smashes his father's head in. into like concrete or something like this. And his dad, beaten and bloodied, comes to you after and says, he has a warning for you. He says, I was a bastard to my wife.

I was a bastard to my son. And Gabriel is going to do the same thing to you. You need to leave him. What did you take from that? When he said that to me, I thought, why couldn't you have just said that to your son? He wanted to hear you were sorry. And you couldn't say it to him. but you're telling me, if he just said he was so worried,

that could have made a world a difference in who he became. Well, why didn't you leave him? He didn't know, but Gabriel was abusive to me, prior to him even saying that to me. And Gabriel threatened my family. So I couldn't leave. There are sections of this book that are written by your sister, Maureen. And she writes,

Lisa was determined to love the good parts of Gabriel, Her heart believed that loving him unconditionally would eventually mend his brokenness. Can you talk a little bit about that? I think somebody who's listening, hearing what you've gone through, would find that hard to understand. How you could still want to love somebody who's so abusive to you. It doesn't make sense, but I could see the brokenness in him and hearing the stories from his perspective as a little boy and all that he went through. I felt so bad for him, and I thought he just needs somebody to show him real love and what love feels like. And if I loved him enough, I could change that.

But I was naive to think that I could change anything. It's just hard for people to understand in some ways. Do you understand whether they're doing? I absolutely do. My whole life, I've always looked at the positive anything. Being in a relationship with somebody who's abusive, you try not to focus on the bad. because if it was bad all the time, you wouldn't be there. But he showed me parts that he was gentle and he was kind.

But then on the flip side, he was a monster. And it was every day, it was an up and down minute to minute struggle, not knowing what's going to set them off. What does it like to live in that situation where you tiptoe around worrying that if you say the wrong thing, if you do the wrong thing, that that's going to set off the explosion? Awful, awful. You know, even with my family. At one point, they knew of one incident, and then they wanted me to leave.

But they didn't understand that it was more than this one time. And I knew if I told them anything more, they would say we're not having him in our life. We don't want to be around him. And then I would be isolated that I wouldn't be able to see them. I would just have Gabriel, and I didn't want that. Something changed in him in the days before and the weeks before the shooting. He talked about how he was going to go out with a bang. He threatened to kill his parents in this awful graphic language.

And he said that he knew when he was going to die. How do you look back at all of that now? I mean, again, in hindsight, those are flashing warning signals. Absolutely. How do you see that now? It just didn't happen a month prior to the incident. This was something with Gabriel for years, that he would say certain things, and it was almost to get a reaction from me, and that was crazy talk to me.

I would be like, this does not make sense. It's not normal. And I would proceed to try to walk away, and he's like, okay, I'll stop. He also had, and this plays a key role in the horror that follows. He had this replica RCMP cruiser in a uniform. Did that raise alarm bells to you at all? That he had this car that looked like an official cop car? Mm-hmm.

It did. Yeah. Like with Gabriel, he was one that collected things. As abnormal as this is, it was my normal with him, because that's what he did in bulk with everything. But with this particular car that he mocked up, as it looked identical to a police car, I was like, you know, you need to find out

if you can actually have this vehicle. And he's like, oh, yeah, I'll look into that. Because I'm like, you can't, you know, that's probably illegal, you can't do that. And he said that he would take care of it. And I never heard any more about it. So then I questioned him again. Like, I'm like, did you ask to see if you can?

And if you didn't, I can try to find out for you. No, Lisa, don't get involved. I'll look at it and I'll let you know. And then he said, yeah. I can have it. It's not licensed, so I can't drive it. It's more for display, and he said he put all the fallen police officers on the hood of it. That never happened, obviously.

But this is one thing he did say to me. He said, if anything ever happened, like the end of the world, and he needed to get out of town, that would be a vehicle that he would use to get out of town. Because people would think that it's a police car. Yeah. And nobody would stop it. Which is what people thought as he was driving around. People thought, the victims thought, that he was a police officer.

Did you think, I mean, given what he had said, given the abuse that you had faced, the question that a lot of people ask is, is again, why you hadn't gone to police? I mean, this is something even your sister had asked, right? Will you call the police? And you said no. Help us understand why those, what you see now is warning signs, what you see now as an alarm bell, why that didn't propel you to call police. I guess for me, we grew up to trust the police, but at the same time, hearing stories in the news about women who have been in abusive relationships and not being heard by the police

and feeling like if I go to the police, he's going to, I'm going to pay the price for that. And I was scared for my life. I was scared from my family. He knew how to scare me. He knew how to threaten me to a point that I wouldn't say anything. and times that he would beat me up and be abusive to me. If I left and I went to Marines and I ended up coming back to him,

he'd asked me, did you tell your family? And I said, no, because I didn't want to paint him in a bad light. This was something that came up during the Mass Casualty Commission as well, where you were asked about going to the police, and you said that it was a fair question. But you also said, and this is a quotation that made headlines. You said, I feared what he would do and that the grown men who knew he had guns, didn't say anything either.

They were scared of him, so what am I going to do? The police officer that was friends with him, he knew. He's been in the place. So if he's not going to do anything, and he's an officer, and the police knew of this abuse, and never once did one approach me, not once. I shouldn't have to go to the police if other people are saying she's being abused, and they know about it.

So I think grown men are scared to death of him. And yet you want me to call him out? That doesn't make sense. Let me ask you about that day in April of 2020, the day of the shootings. You'd been celebrating your 19th anniversary. And he became violent. He attacked you. Handcuffed you and then locked you in the back of this replica, R-CMPCruiser.

you somehow managed to escape into the woods and you stay there overnight. How did you escape these handcuffs? How did you get out? He took me back to the warehouse. He pulled out the handcuffs as soon as we got in there and he said, give me your hand. And I'm like, you don't have to do this. Like, what are you doing? And he said, give me your hand.

And he put a handcuff on one of my hands and my wrist. And he said, give me your other one. And I'm thinking, in my mind, if I'm getting away, I need my hands to be able to escape here. And he said, this is going to be burned. We're going to Dartmouth. And then from there, we're going to mornings. And I thought at that point, he's going to go through my whole family.

Just kill me now. He's going to burn your house down, and then he's going to go and kill your family. And then he's going to kill my family. And I'm thinking my heart was coming out of my chest. And it's like, if you're going to kill my family, I don't want to be here. So just kill me now. But I thought, I don't want to see the bullet coming. So I just covered my eyes.

And I bent down. And he said, get up. And I'm like, Gabriel, no, it doesn't have to be like this. Please, no. And he shot on one side of me. And he said, get up. And then he shot on the other side of me. And he said, I'm not going to tell you again.

And at this point, I thought, okay, I'm in the middle. If he shot on either side, I'm going to get shot now. And I stood up while I was down with my hands like this, he could have easily put the other cuff on my wrist. But he didn't. I don't know if he was in shock that I was just willing to give up. But he didn't. And when I stood up, he grabbed me.

and he threw me in the back of the police car. And at that moment, it was like he was robotic. Like, he was on a mission. He was going out to move the Jeep that was in front of the garage door. I'm praying in the back of the car, and I'm trying to get the handcuff off me. Even though I wasn't, they weren't attached, I felt confined.

And it was like, get this off of me. And then all of a sudden he comes back into the warehouse. And he goes by the bar and he has a bunch of guns. bullets and he throws him in the passenger seat of the front car. I'm just watching him. I'm not saying anything. And then he proceeded to go upstairs into the apartment of the warehouse. And at this point, I am just trying to get out of this car. And on either side, there's like little openings. And I'm thinking if I can, I don't know what I was thinking. I was just thinking, I need to get out of here. It was a mocked up one. It wasn't like a secure one that's locked. So you

could move it. But I was in the divider. The divider. The divider. So I went like this and it opened. And then I just jumped in the front seat, how I didn't hit the horn when I I don't even know. I was just thinking I need to get out of here. And I opened the driver's door and I just started running. And while I was in the back seat of the car, I'm thinking, okay, if I get out of here, where am I going to run? Because upstairs, there's windows and he can see the whole yard. So I'm thinking if I go this side, there's no windows on this side of the building. So I thought if I go out, I'm going to the side where there's no windows where you can't see me. And as soon as I get out, that's where I went through the woods and then cross

road and went into the other woods. Choose clicks. Choose the algorithm. Choose doom scrolling at 3am, eyes tired, brain rewired. Choose headlines that scream. Choose fake friends, deep fakes, bots, and comment wars that never end. Choose truth bent and broken until you can't tell up from down or write from wrong. Choose the chaos. Choose the noise. Or don't. Choose news, not noise. CBC News. I've been speaking with Lisa Banfield.

She was the common law wife of Gabriel Warkman, the Nova Scotia man who shot and killed 22 people in April of 2020, this country's worst mass shooting. Lisa Banfield has just published her new memoir, chronicling the years of abuse she suffered leading up to those shootings. Just a warning. This is a frank conversation. about intimate partner violence.

Before the news, Lisa talked about the night the killings began. Gabriel Wartman had threatened her, shot at her, threatened her family, and said he was going to set their house on fire. Lisa managed to escape from him and hide in the woods near their home. Lisa, what was it like for you in the woods that night? I was scared.

I was horrified hearing these noises and explosions. and I'm thinking, doesn't anybody see or hear what's happening? Like, why aren't the police here? Why aren't the ambulances? Like, what is going on here? And I thought if somebody comes, like a police or ambulance or fire truck, something, then I'll come out. But I was scared that he was looking for me. And I'm thinking, I'm hiding.

I'm not getting out of these woods. And when I came across this log that was buried out, I thought, okay, maybe it was a bear that dug this out and is something going to attack me now. And I had no, I had bare feet. And so I took the ends of my tights to tie them in a knot so my feet weren't exposed. And my arms, I pulled over my hands. And then I would breathe underneath my shirt because my breath, you can see. And I thought if he comes in the woods, he's going to see.

It was horrifying. Then when I saw this fire going on and hearing two men, and I'm thinking, oh, my God, if I just yelled to them, but then I didn't want to yell because if Gabriel's hearing me, then he'll get me. So I thought if I can just get to these men. But I was in so much pain with my back, like I could barely stand up. So I'm trying to find something to prop myself up, and I found a stick, and I got up, and I started to walk, and this stick broke, and I dropped my knees.

And then all of a sudden I heard, hey boys, and it was bang, bang, dead silence. And I thought I was this close to being out there. and then I just crawled right back to where I was until the morning. And that was the sound of him shooting those two men. And you heard, so you heard some of the carnage that he was unleashing. When did you realize the full extent of what Gabriel Wartman had done? Not until I was in the hospital. I remember being in the hospital and having a police officer outside of my room.

And I remember. remember them, sorry. It's okay. Coming in, and he said that he's been caught. And in my mind, I'm thinking, oh, my God, okay, you caught him. Is he dead? I would never wish anybody dead, but I'm thinking he has a lot of money. And if he goes to jail, he can get somebody to get me and my family.

Like I said, is he alive? And they said, I can't tell you. And it wasn't until I was in my own room. And my sister Maureen came in and told me everything that happened. I was in shock of what he did and how close I was. You write in the book that you think about this. You say, what if I didn't escape to the woods, would those innocent people still be alive? How often do you think of that?

All the time. What does that question mean to you? I still feel that way in a sense that he was. looking for me. And I know that in my mind and in my heart, I feel if I didn't get out of that car that he was going to do what he told me he was going to do and go to Dartmouth and then go to Mourines and come after my family. So when I escaped, I felt like I'm not going to go to anybody's host because I don't want to get them involved because then they're going to get hurt. So if he's coming after me, he's not going to hurt anybody else. My mistake, obviously,

but in the moment, that's what I was thinking. The RCMP eventually laid charges against you for supplying Gabriel Warpman with ammunition, ammunition that you purchased that the RCMP believed was used in this killing. You went through this restorative justice process, so those charges were dropped. But what was the impact that the charges had on the way the people in that community? It's a tight-knit community.

We spent some time there. People are very close. What did those charges do to how you were seen in that community? I was seen as a monster. I was seen as just like him. And as far as those bullets, any gun that he had was filled with bullets. He had ammunition tin full of bullets. Hence, when he asked me to get them for him, I said,

you have more than enough bullets. Like, what do you need these bullets for? And because of the pandemic, he was. so paranoid about people coming at him. And I just felt like I didn't have a choice, but to do what he want me to do. Which is purchase ammunition. Yeah. Yeah. You say in the book, these are your words, I have absolutely no doubt that with or without the last purchased bullets, the fate of all would have remained the same. Absolutely. Why do you say that? Because he had more than enough to do whatever he wanted to do. I don't believe those bullets were even used. And there's

no proof that they were. But in the public's eyes, they think that because I provided him with some that had I not have done that, this wouldn't have happened. And that's not true. You say that you were publicly crucified when those charges were laid. You call it a witchification. What does that mean? I felt like I was a scapegoat because there were so many mistakes that the police made that I was their way of taking the heat off of them. That's what I felt like. The title of that chapter is victim or suspect. Do you feel like a suspect? Absolutely. I was made to feel like I did something wrong. And I didn't. I never helped him.

People posted online about you saying, in their words, that you were as guilty as he was, that any decent human being would have tried to stop him. Do you understand why people in that community, particularly people who lost loved ones, why they would be so hostile towards you? I do. I do. I understand that because if it was my family, I would want answers. I feel so sorry for those people because they're hurt and they want answers and they want somebody to blame and he's not here and I am. And it's so easy to say, you know, if she's a good human being, why wouldn't she say anything? Because I was scared. I was scared of him. I was threatened by him.

I don't know what else I could have done. And I pray for those people. They're in my prayers every night. One of the places where people were looking for those answers is the Mass Casualty Commission. And this was designated to be what they call a trauma-informed process. And part of that was the commissioners deciding that you wouldn't be cross-examined by the family's lawyers. And the families were extraordinarily upset by this. Some threatened to pull out of the process entirely.

Some said that this denied them their opportunity to get the answers that you're talking about. How do you see that now? What I see is in the very beginning when this all happened of me going to the MCC, I was offered to have a recording aside from being there, and they would show the video there of my interview. And I chose to be in front of those families. I believe they deserved to have me there and to ask whatever they wanted to ask. I was willing to sit down with them, and they could ask me whatever they want,

even through restorative justice. But I was told that it wouldn't be safe because there was family members that weren't in that headspace. I just wouldn't be safe. You were told by lawyers not to speak with the families because it wouldn't be safe. Yeah. And my only stipulation with the commission was

I will come and be there in person, but I don't want to feel like I'm being attacked. So I asked that Gillian be the one to ask the questions. All the family members could ask Jillian to ask me whatever they wanted. Juliana, who's one of the... Yes, to ask me. Whatever they wanted to ask me, and I would answer it

because I felt safe with her, and they didn't think that was right. You also had, and I want to come back to that, but you also had... You'd be walking down the street in Dartmouth, and people would stop you, and they would yell at you across the street, and you were worried about what they would say, and they would offer words of support to you.

What did that mean to you? Oh, I just started to cry. It was finally somebody, somebody understands that I too am a victim and I so appreciated that. You said that you wanted to speak with the family members of the victims. You write that in 2024 at a court hearing, you say that you approached Nick Beaton, his pregnant wife, Kristen, was murdered. Why was it important for you to try to say something to him?

I've always wanted to speak to the families, but I was told not to. and to say I was sorry. But then some of them would say, if you say you're sorry, then you're admitting you did something and you didn't do it. He did it. But it's like how do you be compassionate to somebody and show empathy, but yet then be judged like, oh, she has to be sorry because she did something. It was hard.

And I did the best that I could at that time. Nick Beaton and many of the other family members are still very angry with you. Nick Beaton, after the news of your book came out last week, posted on Facebook about this, accusing you of trying to profit off of his tragedy. He says in part, I just want to read this. He says, I'm expected to just sit and take it. I'm sick of all of this. We just want to heal and try to provide some quality of life for those who are left. And then you get the knife twisted deeper into your heart.

When you hear that from him, he lost, he went through hell. on that day. What would you say to Nick Beaton now? I would say I'm sorry that you feel that way. I'm not profiting from any of these interviews. If he thinks I'm making money off this, it's not about making money off this. It's about bringing something to light

that is hidden throughout the world and the fact that my story needs to be told because it's not just my story. It's a lot of people's story. And I do this because of those victims and their families. Because they need to know that this was because of domestic violence and because it's an epidemic. And it's, sorry.

I'm just sorry that he feels the way he feels. I just want to play one thing for you. And this is CBC News spoke with Tammy Oliver McCurdy. She lost three family members during the mass shooting. Julian Oliver, Aaron Tuck, and Emily Tuck. Have a listen to what she said to CBC News. Lots of other people have stories and why she has to take a story tied to so many deaths. There are so many things that we're still dealing with from that event.

Still today, on a regular basis from our family members. And I think, like, there are lots of stories like that, that she have to take our story, take away from our victim stories, and leverage that for whatever reason. There's lots of other stories out there. Does it have to be hers? Do you understand that? I mean, this is bringing up a lot of trauma for them.

It's for you as well. It's really difficult for you to talk about this. For them, knowing that this story is back out and that we're talking about, it brings up a lot of trauma for them. Do you understand that? I do. But this is part of my healing journey, too. There are so many victims, and it's not just those 22 people.

It's extended family. And because of me telling my story, I have to say Dr. Jaffe had reached out to my sister, Maureen, the other day. And he had said that since my interview, that he has had so many women contact him in need of help. And I've had more people saying, because I spoke up, it gives them strength and direction to be able to say, I need help too. And if I could do that, people are going to say whatever they want about me and judge me. But if I could help one person throw out all of this, I can take that.

The Nova Scotia government in September of 2024 declared intimate partner violence to be an epidemic. What is your role in that conversation, do you think? I feel like it should have been deemed an epidemic way before this happened. It's sad that it took this. And the more discussion and the more talk about it is only going to be forced to make changes. You talked about how police did or did not treat you in the way that you felt you could be treated or should have been treated when this was happening. What changes would you like to see in terms of the way the police deal with victims of violence? Well, I feel like somebody needs to be trained in order to be able to deal with the victim instead of judging them for staying.

Like, for me, being the first survivor and being put in a hospital and not examined for all the things that happened to me, nobody took pictures of me, nobody, like, police officers need to be trained, policies need to be changed. Was it meaningful for you that the commission, I mean, validated a lot of your story, but also rejected what it called victim blaming? Yeah. I truly felt like they got it. there needs to be more awareness and there needs to be change. And the more you talk about it, instead of ignoring it and pretending it doesn't happen or it's not happening to me, it's not my business, it's everybody's business. There might be, just finally, there might be people who are listening who are in that situation or that they know somebody who they suspect is being abused.

Yeah. What would you say to them? Say something. speak up. You know, you matter. You have a voice. You need to use it. Because the abuser prays on

scaring you enough to silence you and don't be silenced. Tell somebody, anybody, but do something. I know when I was in that, I didn't because I was scared. But being out of it and looking at it now, I think, had I have told somebody

at least I wouldn't be keeping this all in, and maybe they could give me a perspective that would make me feel that I could leave. Because being isolated with that person, you're so consumed with whatever they're saying that you're not even thinking clearly. But if you have somebody that you can talk to, and if you have a friend that you know is being abused, and you say, I tell them to leave and they don't leave and, you know, I can't do anymore. Yes, you can. You can keep talking to them and you keep being there for them

until they can be there for themselves. Lisa, thank you very much for this. Take care of yourself. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Lisa Banfield's memoir is called The First Survivor, Life with Canada's Deadliest Mass Shooter. If you or anyone you know is experiencing violence at home, please call the Assaulted Women's Toll Free Helpline. It's 1-866-863-0-5-1-1 You can also text hashtag safe.

That's 7233 on your bell, Rogers, Fido, or TELUS mobile phone. And if you are in immediate danger, call 911. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.