On November 30, 2019, Denise Stennett joined a grim group: another mother grieving a child killed by a gun.
Her son, Joel, was out walking with friends he was visiting in Brampton, Ontario. Someone called out his nickname — Steno — from a car. When he turned to answer, he was shot.
He was 18.
Joel was one of 59 shooting victims that year in the Peel Region, according to data from Peel Regional Police. His case is still unsolved, police confirmed to Canadian Affairs.
Between 2016 and 2020, more than 600 Canadians 25 years old and younger died from gunshots, the Canadian Pediatric Society says, citing Statistics Canada data.
Joel was Denise’s only child, her best friend and confidante, Denise says. She refers to him often in the present tense. “I miss him,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “We discussed everything.”
Even so, their relationship was not always easy. Joel struggled with anger and depression. He was trying to fit in with new friends.
“Behind the funny guy that everybody loved, he had extremely low self-esteem,” Denise said.
A lifelong musician, he turned to rap, recording songs under the name Steno. His lyrics mentioned connections to the inner city — even though he was not from those neighbourhoods. Denise cautioned against that: she did not want people thinking he was associated with neighbourhoods known for gang violence.
He was still working out who he wanted to be in life. Then, in a moment, he was gone.
Calls for greater gun control have intensified in recent years, particularly in response to two mass shootings. In July 2018, 29-year-old Faisal Hussain opened fire on Toronto’s Danforth Avenue, wounding 13 people and killing 18-year-old Reese Fallon and 10-year-old Julianna Kozis. In April 2020, 51-year-old Gabriel Wortman killed 22 people in Nova Scotia in the country’s worst-ever mass shooting.
This week, Ottawa passed new gun control laws. Bill C-21, first introduced in May 2022, will prevent people convicted of domestic violence from having a firearms licence. And it will increase the maximum sentences for people convicted of certain gun-related offences.
It passed the House in May by a margin of 207-113, with the Conservatives voting against it. The bill passed the Senate on December 14 and received Royal Assent on December 15.
‘A weekly thing’
Doctors say gun violence is a public health issue — especially for children and youth.
Guns injure thousands of children every year, Dr. Natasha Saunders, a paediatrician at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, told the Senate’s Standing Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs in October.
In Ontario alone, 5,486 children and youth were brought to hospitals with gunshot wounds between 2003 and 2018, Saunders told the committee, speaking on behalf of the Canadian Pediatric Society. More than 500 of them died.
Injuries varied. Most were related to suicide or were unintentional; more than a quarter were related to assault.
“All of these injuries were not just scrapes and bruises,” Saunders told the committee. “Half were shot in the head and neck, and of those, half resulted in traumatic brain injury. These are not small numbers.”
In a brief to the committee, the Canadian Paediatric Society expressed concerns about how guns harm children and youth.
“The [Canadian Paediatric Society] believes that guns should not be kept in homes or environments where children and adolescents live or play,” the brief reads.
“The relationship between firearms injuries and death and mental health is significant and often under-reported,” the brief continues. Intentional self-harm accounts for most gun-related deaths among people of all ages, including children and youth.
“It is important that legislative measures be enacted alongside targeted programs to address many of the root causes behind gun violence,” including increased mental health supports for children and youth, the brief reads.
The paediatric society supports the new three-digit Suicide Crisis Helpline, launched by Ottawa last month. The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, in Toronto, is leading and coordinating delivery of the service nationwide.
People who are considering suicide or are concerned someone they know may be considering it can call or text 9-8-8 any time, day and night. Responders are trained to respond to calls and texts, and sometimes people are transferred to service providers in their province or territory.
At St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, Dr. Najma Ahmed says she sees an increase in people admitted to hospital with gunshot wounds.
Responding to such cases “used to be the occasional thing,” said Ahmed, a trauma surgeon who was on-call during the Danforth shooting. “Now it’s a weekly thing.”
The wounds are more complicated too, says Ahmed, who is also on the board of Canadian Doctors for Protection from Guns, a group of physicians advocating for better gun protections in Canada. About half the people who are shot die before they reach the hospital, she says.
“These guns are intended to injure and kill, and they’re very effective,” she said.
‘Judgement is passed’
Supporting people after a gun injury or families after someone has been shot and killed is difficult, Ahmed says. Gun injuries can cause life-altering disabilities, changing people’s plans for work or school.
Relatives of the deceased often struggle to find support because people often assume crime was involved, Ahmed says. “It’s a really terrible thing that so much judgement is passed in this situation,” she said.
Denise Stennett knows this well.
“The stigma is [that] every shooting … has to be in the inner city or gang-related,” she said. She and Joel did not live in the inner city, and he was not in a gang, she says.
Denise did receive some counselling and support from victim services after Joel died. But she knows other mothers who have not had support.
She attends meetings with Mothers for Peace, a support group in Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood for mothers whose children have been shot. It is far from her home in Etobicoke, but there is nothing close to her that focuses on helping people grieve after a shooting.
For her part, Denise says the law can do only so much to curb gun violence. Part of the problem, she says, is that many young people admire gang life, even if they are not part of it. “It’s an identity crisis,” she said.
“I just hope one day there’s something that can help with this growing problem.”
Editor’s Notes: This article has been updated with additional information from Denise Stennett.
On December 15, this story was updated to reflect that Bill C-21 had received Royal Assent.
