50 years later, an Ottawa high schooler’s violent unravelling still leaves deep scars

Bill Shepheard answered thousands of calls during his 35-year career as an Ottawa police officer. Many have receded from his memory. But the one he took on Oct. 27, 1975, remains clear in his mind.

That Monday afternoon, Shepheard was dispatched to St. Pius X High School for a call about someone with a gun. He figured it was a fight between roofers who were working on the school that day.

He never thought a student might be involved.

But what he soon witnessed in the hallway outside Classroom 71, and the larger tragedy that unfolded that day, would upend city residents’ views of what could and could not happen in Ottawa.

In a matter of seconds, an 18-year-old student at St. Pius had burst into the doorway of his religion class, opened fire with a sawed-off shotgun and wounded seve