“Get out of the building right now.” That was the message I received from my friend, barely a minute after she had left the Bronfman building (home to McGill’s Desautels Faculty of Management), where we had been studying together.
On Friday, April 10th around 5:30pm, what started off as a quiet, rainy day on campus quickly escalated into a tense situation. After a 911 call from inside the building, the intersection of Sherbrooke and Peel rapidly filled with emergency vehicles.
Police cruisers and a fire truck blocked off the area, and military personnel were later seen on the scene as well.
“It was kind of scary, seeing them all barge in with big guns,” said one student who had been inside the building at the time.
Inside, alarms blared through the staircases as police began an evacuation. While most people were escorted out safely, there were reports indicating that a few individuals remained temporarily trapped inside during the initial response. The timing of the incident prevented a larger evacuation: the Desautels Faculty of Management does not hold classes on Fridays, meaning the number of people present in the building was significantly lower than on a typical weekday.
Outside, SPVM officers questioned those gathered nearby, specifically asking whether they had been on the sixth floor or knew anyone who had been there. According to police, someone on that floor had shouted a code used to signal a potential active-shooter situation: “Shutdown, shutdown.”
A few hours later, authorities confirmed that the building was safe to re-enter and announced that the threat had proven to be unfounded. Police denied any claims that the incident was a student prank, but remained vague about what had actually occurred. According to CTV News, the alert was caused by students slamming doors which appeared to sound like gunshots.
While those in and around the Bronfman building gradually learned what was happening, McGill did not send a direct alert to the broader student body. Many expressed frustration at the lack of communication, particularly given the university’s heightened security presence during protests in support of Palestine over the past year.
“It’s kind of crazy thinking that I was just two buildings away and had no idea what was going on,” said one student who found out about the shooter scare through Instagram later in the evening.
“I get that they didn’t want to create unnecessary panic, but what if it had been real? Were they just going to wait until shots were fired to tell students to find a safe space?”
Beyond campus, the incident felt especially unsettling because of its surrounding context. Earlier that same day, rumours of a shooting circulated at a high school located in the Town of Mont-Royal, and a similar incident unfolded at the University of Ottawa. For the students aware of these events when the alarm went off in Bronfman, the fear was anything but abstract.
