Acclaimed author tells of ‘terrifying’ roadside incident in Fort St. John

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — A local Indigenous writer and activist called her experience being accosted by a pair of motorists outside Fort St. John during a late-night drive with a friend “terrifying.”

In the aftermath of the October 8th incident, Helen Knott — the author of the Governor General’s Literary Award-nominated memoir Becoming a Matriarch — said the City of Fort St. John needs to carry out an assessment of steps it can take to protect residents who are members of marginalized groups.

“It was about 10 at night, and we went for a drive,” Knott explained in an interview with Energeticcity.ca. “We picked up tea and we were just kind of driving around the outskirts, because Fort St. John is small, and then we were coming up from the Old Fort [subdivision].”

As the pair approached the hill, Knott said two motorists in pickup trucks behind them started to drive aggressively, tailgating them and passing them at a high speed.

“We thought they were gone, but when we got to the top of the hill, we saw that they were both parked on the road side-by-side,” Knott said.

“One vehicle reversed and then started coming towards us, and [the driver] tried to get us to stop. The other one blocked the road at the time.”

Knott urged her friend driving to keep going, leading to the motorist in the truck beside their vehicle to reverse. Meanwhile, the one blocking the road moved slightly, giving the pair room to navigate into a nearby driveway.

“As we turned [into the driveway], I called the police, and then we heard gunshots. There were three or four that went off.”

Knott and her companion waited in the driveway for police officers to arrive, after explaining the situation to the nearby homeowners whose property was attached to the driveway.

“Police came and they took the report of what happened,” Knott said. “The constable at the time, she was really good, and she escorted us back to the road.”

The following day, Knott contacted the RCMP detachment again to get the file number for her case and see if there had been any developments. She was told to wait until the constable who was at the scene on October 8th got back to her.

In the aftermath of what happened, Knott took to social media calling for “a serious assessment by the City of Fort St. John and local RCMP in regard to community safety and how that extends to all our community members,” specifically calling out residents who are part of marginalized groups like black and Indigenous people of colour (BIPOC) and the unhoused.

“I don’t want to contribute to a feeling of being unsafe [in Fort St. John], but there are, it seems like, more frequent activities that have had a violent nature, and/or have scared people.”

Knott says much of that shows on social media, although there are many other incidents that go unreported and aren’t shared. 

“I’d like to know what that looks like, in terms of a city plan and/or regional, and ‘how do we address violent occurrences?’” she said. 

“‘How do we keep people safe?’ But then also, ‘how does that lend to our BIPOC residents, the unsheltered residents that we have, and what does that look like?’ Because it’s not just in terms of fining people and punishing people, but also ‘how do we look at the root causes of some of these occurrences?’”

She called her experience “terrifying,” and hoped such an assessment would help in finding ways to meaningfully hold people responsible for causing violence.

Energeticcity.ca contacted the RCMP to learn more about the incident and any further developments since October 8th, and did not receive a response in time for publication.