B.C. march commemorates missing, murdered women
Hundreds brave the cold to call for action against gender-based violence
VANCOUVER—Despite the hurt and emotional trauma of reliving her sister and niece’s death, Pauline Johnson said she has yet to miss a year of the Women’s Memorial March in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, now in its 30th year.
Johnson was one of the hundreds of people who gathered in the snow for the annual march, which is held to honour and remember women lost to violence, abuse, poverty and systemic racism.
Johnson’s sister Rose Marie Johnson died in 1980, and her death has been linked to a man who was convicted of another death in a separate incident.
Charlene Kerr, Johnson’s niece, was stabbed to death in the Lamplighter Hotel in the 1980s. “There should be some change. It’s disheartening that there isn’t,” she said, adding that there needs to be more awareness of the violence Indigenous women and men face.
Johnson said little has been done to properly investigate the disproportionate amount of Indigenous women that go missing or are killed in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. “Because we’re First Nation, we’re meaningless to society. That gets to be tiresome,” she said.
Serial killer Robert Pickton was convicted in 2007 on six counts of second-degree murder but is suspected of killing dozens of women who went missing from the Downtown Eastside. Vancouver police were criticized for not taking the cases seriously because many of the missing were sex workers or drug users.
Myrna Cranmer, one of the event’s co-organizers, said both violence and COVID-19 have had a profound affect on the health of women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood this past year.
She estimates 50 women from the neighbourhood have died under violent circumstances or from COVID-19 since last March. “Some of the names that come up every year, it just really hurts my heart,” Cranmer said. “I’ve known these women, I’ve worked with them and it’s just very sad.”
Vancouver police couldn’t confirm the number. Sunday’s march was livestreamed to allow people to stay home if they were sick or did not feel comfortable attending a large event.