With music at the forefront of an online vigil to honour the 22 people who were killed in a mass shooting in Nova Scotia, one of the most hauntingly beautiful segments featured the massacre’s youngest victim.
Cape Breton fiddler Natalie MacMaster and her daughter, Mary Frances, on the piano, were shown playing along with a video of 17-year-old Emily Tuck performing the waltz “In Memory of Herbie MacLeod.” Watch the video above.
“To my dear Nova Scotia, we are there with you in the deepest of ways,” MacMaster told her home province, before commenting on Tuck’s “beautiful performance” that had been circulating on social media in the days after the killings.
“She was a fiddler, so I thought I would unite myself to her performance and play this tune for all the souls who lost their lives,” she said.
The segment ends with Tuck saying with a grin, “There’s some fiddle for ya.”
The teen’s video had been uploaded to an online “kitchen party” Facebook group a month before she and her parents, Jolene Oliver and Aaron Tuck, were killed in Portapique, N.S. The Facebook group was created to bring people together during COVID-19 restrictions on in-person gatherings.
The performance that aired as part of “Nova Scotia Remembers” moved many people.
A very personal tribute
The horror unfolded over Saturday and Sunday when a gunman dressed as an RCMP officer with a fake cruiser set fires and shot his victims across 90 kilometres and several communities in northern Nova Scotia.
Nova Scotia residents with personal connections to those killed spent the week gathering recordings of music and tributes from public figures, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Premier Stephen McNeil and Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby, originally from the province, for the vigil.
George Canyon, Jenn Grant, Reeny Smith, and Classified were among the Nova Scotia musicians who recorded musical performances for the 90-minute event that was streamed online and broadcast by CBC, CTV and several radio stations.
RCMP members and other police forces across the country observed a moment of silence Friday afternoon to honour the victims.
The National Police Federation encouraged people to wear red Friday in memory of Const. Heidi Stevenson and the other victims.
With files from Canadian Press