ENFIELD, N.S. — When she hears sirens blaring, Tanya Burkholder takes a moment to offer up a little prayer.
“It’s been awful,” Burkholder said of the weekend killing rampage that ended not far from the Enfield home she shares with 10-year-old son Dylan.
“This is the first time I’ve been able to talk about it without crying,” said Burkholder. “As soon as I heard it, I immediately got sick to my stomach. My first thought is always with the officers and please, please, please, don’t let any of the officers be shot and killed.”
Burkholder, now 45, has a memory etched forever in her mind of a special RCMP officer being shot and killed on June 14, 1996, while responding to a domestic dispute in rural Maders Cove, Lunenburg County.
"Now they know better how to handle it, how to let families have their time of privacy and be able to grieve."
The officer was her father, Sgt. Derek Burkholder, a 29-year veteran of the force who had served in several detachments across the province.
“I pray every day for them to come home because I don’t want anybody to ever experience the pain that we went through,” Burkholder said of her older sister, Tammy, and their mom, Frances.
“At that time, it was new to everybody,” Burkholder said. “Nobody knew how to handle the situation, what to say to us and how to deal with it.
“Now they know better how to handle it, how to let families have their time of privacy and be able to grieve. They (families) have a long road ahead of them, the pain is a roller-coaster ride. Some days are good and just when you think you are doing well, all of a sudden something happens, a song, a siren, anything like that and it just hits you again. There is nothing you can do about it, all you do is roll with it. But I believe nothing is thrown at us that we can’t handle. It may seem hard right now and it may take years, I know it took many years for myself, my sister and my mom to be able to even cope with the pain. Mom, in all honesty, I don’t think she’s ever really dealt with it, it was easier for her just to put it in the back of her mind.”
Burkholder-Stevenson connection
The person foremost in Burkholder’s mind from the weekend killings is Const. Heidi Stevenson, a 23-year veteran of the force who, before her marriage, shared the Burkholder name and is thought to be a distant cousin.
Tanya Burkholder first met Stevenson at a ceremony to commemorate her father’s death.
“We always tried to stay in contact with one another,” Burkholder said.
Shortly after Burkholder moved to Enfield last August, she had occasion to drop into the Enfield RCMP detachment.
“Heidi answered the door at the detachment and that’s how I knew she was in Enfield,” Burkholder said. “We were there about an hour talking with her.”
Burkholder said Stevenson, her family and the families of all the victims will always be remembered.
“The other families of the victims, the civilians, their lives are of no lesser value than Heidi’s but Heidi is a member of the RCMP and she was there to protect us that day,” Burkholder said. “That’s why she is getting more recognition, she was and always will be a hero, just like Dad and every first responder. They are heroes and we just pray that they come home at the end of the day. That’s all you can do.”
'I pray that it never happens again'
Burkholder said she hopes that the events of the devastating weekend can be examined to “see what could have been done differently.”
“I pray that it never happens again but unfortunately it probably will.”
Burkholder said Const. Stevenson’s husband’s Dean and their two young children are likely accustomed to her being away from home.
“When you belong to the RCMP family, you are used to, in my case it was Dad being on courses and he’d be gone for a couple of days at a time or a week or two and then come back. It’s something that seems normal. It took months for me to realize that he’s not coming home. You keep looking for that police car to pull in the yard and, OK, Dad’s back, and it’s not happening.”
Burkholder, 21 when her father was killed, said she can’t imagine having to deal with something like that if she were the ages of the Stevenson children, 10 and 13.
“I know how difficult it was for my sister and I,” Burkholder said. “I wish I could be there just to hold their hands. You feel alone and that nobody understands what you are going through but there are people out there who do and they need to reach out to us to help them along the way because it is not something you can do on your own.
“All those families are going to feel pain. I wish I could snap my fingers and take the pain away from everybody because it’s nothing that anybody should ever, ever have to deal with.”
The COVID-19 factor
Burkholder said the RCMP family was very supportive of her family in the weeks and months following her father’s death, support that will not be as easy to draw upon now because of the coronavirus crisis.
“Unfortunately, because of the COVID, the isolation and quarantines, Heidi is not going to get the funeral she deserves,” Burkholder said. “It’s going to be difficult because right now they need that support, that hug from people and they can’t have it. It’s going to take longer for them.
“For civilians that knew her and that she helped along the way, they can’t attend that funeral and get their closure. It may not seem important to some but for those that she has helped and touched their lives in some way, that’s closure for them. Not to be able to that is going to be very, very difficult.”
Burkholder said she and her family provide “living proof that you can get through it,” and she now shares experiences about her father, the good times and the terrible pain of his death, with son Dylan.
“Dylan is very much like his grandfather,” Burkholder said. “He makes people follow rules and he gets upset when they don’t.
“He wants to be mayor of a town. Law is our blood, we all want to be part of it somehow, but he said ‘I don’t want to be a police officer because you don’t come home.’ I hate to hear that and I try to explain to him that not everybody gets hurt and most officers do come home.”
