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The First Survivor

Life with Canada's Deadliest Mass Shooter

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The First Survivor

By: Lisa Banfield, Sherri Aikenhead, Maureen Banfield
Narrated by: Lisa Banfield, Janice Banfield, Maureen Banfield
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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.

©2026 Sutherland House Books (P)2026 Sutherland House Books Abductions, Kidnapping & Missing Persons Gerontology Murder Social Sciences True Crime Survival
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The author is deeply wounded. The author lost a lot in 20 years with their spouse. Freedom to love and spend time with their family, having no child because the spouse was uninterested in kids, staying after knowing they intentionally sterilised. The author was failed by their parents,father specifically. Meeting a partner who shared similar failure; The author believed they could be a hero whereas they needed the hero more. Despite the family, siblings support, loving the abuser more than themselves. They were aware of the danger however still believed they could save someone who couldn't and didn't want to be saved. The author needed therapy as a 14 year old, somehow it took over 35 years to get it.

The book is explicitly detailed, sadly it took 22 souls for the protagonist to see their worth.

The authors resilience

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