Vigil a small but solemn affair

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A handful of people braved the winter weather Nov. 16 to attend a memorial in a downtown Toronto park to honor the Native women missing in Vancouver and the hundreds of others missing across the country.

Amber O'Hara is the organizer of the event and the Toronto representative of Vanished Voices Never Again, an international group that attempts to raise the public's awareness about the missing women's plight.

"Our memorial is about awareness of the missing women across Canada. People don't realize that there are over 500 Aboriginal women missing in Canada today," she said.

The investigation of Robert Pickton, the man accused of the murder of 15 women who went missing from downtown Vancouver and whose remains have been found at his pig farm in Port Coquitlam, B.C. has brought the issue of missing Aboriginal women to the media forefront, said O'Hara, but for years there were people out there looking for these women and their efforts didn't garner enough interest for one news story.

"I'm a grieving woman," said Diane McGuire, one of the women at the vigil. "That's the reason I'm here. I'm grieving for the misogyny in our culture and this is an example of it."

O'Hara read the names of women who are currently missing, starting with the name Helen Betty Osborne, the young Cree girl who was brutally killed in the Pas, Man. in the early 1970s.

"Any one of us could be on this list," said O'Hara, who preferred to use her Native name Waabnong Kwe. "These women are our sisters, mothers, grandmothers and daughters. These are cases that have become cold and remain unsolved."

As Waabnong Kwe read the names with a brief description of each woman, the people present released balloons as a tribute.

"These women cannot be forgotten," she said.