The First Survivor: Life with Canada's Deadliest Mass Shooter

An unflinching memoir that reframes a national tragedy and demands we reckon with the cost of ignoring intimate partner violence.

On April 18, 2020, Lisa Banfield's life shattered.

After nineteen years in a controlling and often abusive relationship, she escaped a violent assault by her partner, Gabriel Wortman-unaware he was about to carry out the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history. In The First Survivor, Banfield tells her story for the first time: of being groomed and surviving years of intimate partner violence, and of the horrific night she fled barefoot into the freezing woods as Wortman began a murderous rampage that left twenty-two people and an unborn child dead.

Told with raw honesty and courage, Banfield's memoir is more than a personal account of life with a man she tried to heal-it's a call to action. With intimate reflections and her own transformation, she exposes the failures in how society sees, supports, and judges survivors of domestic abuse.

This is a powerful story of trauma, survival, and one woman's journey reclaiming her voice and redefining her life.