Pointe Claire photographer snags prestgious newspaper award

BY ANDY BLATCHFORD

andy.blatchford@transcontinental.ca

Pointe Claire photographer Peter McCabe has reached the top of his profession after beating out Canada's best in winning a prestigious National Newspaper Award.

His photo snapped during last September's Dawson College shooting was featured on hundreds of front pages around the globe.

McCabe, a former staff photographer for The Chronicle, was honoured Friday in Winnipeg.

"It's the best thing that's ever happened to me in my whole life," said McCabe, a freelance photographer who sold the shot to The Canadian Press.

"No doubt about it."

Last month, his photo also won top prize in the spot news category in the National Pictures of the Year competition hosted by the News Photographers Association of Canada.

Upon hearing about the Dawson shooting, McCabe made it to the scene within 11 minutes.

He slipped past police barricades amid the pandemonium that ensued after the first shots were fired.

For 40 minutes, McCabe snapped pictures across de Maisonneuve Boulevard from the college.

"I was too busy trying to get pictures to be concerned with what was happening around me," he said.

"Looking at the pictures after was probably more shocking than the event."

McCabe captured terrified students, hands on their heads, running out of the school as a police officer with his gun drawn crouched behind a cruiser. The body of shooter Kimveer Gill lay at the officer's feet, covered by a yellow tarp.

The photo also shows a large bullet hole in a building window and blood smeared on the police car.

"Words cannot do what a photograph like this can do to show the horror these kids were going through," he said.

"It has it all without being gruesome. Without forcing somebody to turn their eyes away you see that there's been a tragedy."

To see the award-winning photo, check www.westisland.com and click "Recent."