Family, friends pay tribute to ‘sweet’ Regent Park mother
As the sun set Friday, dozens of candles flickered outside 291 George St. to remember Amanda Killeen.
The Toronto mother was reported missing earlier this week and is now believed to be dead.
Family and friends bundled up and gathered on the sidewalk outside the apartment to mourn her sudden, tragic loss.
Known to friends as Slim, Killeen grew up nearby in Regent Park, and is remembered by loved ones as “quiet” and “sweet.”
She was a devoted mother of three. A Gofundme has been started to help provide for her children.
Coming from a tight-knit family, Killeen and her mother were “closer than a stamp and an envelope,” Killeen’s grandfather remembers.
One-by-one, small groups approached the fence of the building, lit candles spelling out her nickname and laid bouquets of flowers next to framed photos and poster boards.
After she disappeared on Feb. 19, Killeen, who would have turned 33 on March 1, was reported missing by her cousin on Monday. Loved ones believe her to be the victim in a homicide investigation, centred on the apartment building.
Early Tuesday morning, Toronto police arrived at 291 George St. in search of a missing woman, who the Star’s Rosie DiManno reports was Killeen. Gedi Ali Gedi, 45, Killeen’s former boyfriend, was shot and killed by two police officers, while Orson York, 59, has been charged with accessory after the fact to murder and committing indignity to a human body.
Police discovered human remains in their search and are now looking for a body, though they would not identify the victim.
Rejoice. We did it. We made it through a COVID-19 winter.
I know, I know: winter doesn’t officially end until March, the pandemic doesn’t officially end until who knows when, and the world is otherwise in shambles. But as I write this, it’s above zero and sunny outside: shorts weather for many men on the streets of Toronto.
And I am buoyed by the fact that Toronto itself is preparing for actual shorts weather. According to an announcement this week, the city is “looking for a wide range of skilled applicants from lifeguards and aquatic instructors to outdoor gardeners and parks handy-workers.”
Toronto is currently accepting job applications for “summer camps, aquatic and lifeguarding programs at the city’s outdoor pools and beaches and other recreation positions.”
Sure, summer events like the Pride parade and Canada Day celebrations are cancelled once again this year. But summer has not been cancelled, nor have many of the programs and jobs that make it worth sticking around for.
The perk of spring and summer in a pandemic (if you can call it a perk) is that “society”— that thing where people go outside and walk around, maybe even say hello to each other — is not a distant memory but a legitimate fact of life.
Another fact of life: Health Canada just approved the AstraZeneca vaccine. This is fantastic news. “A big deal,” Dr. Isaac Bogoch tweeted Friday. “This will accelerate vaccination timelines. It is a more portable vaccine and can be easily administered in primary care clinics.”
Toronto Fire Chief and COVID-19 Incident Commander Matthew Pegg is pretty stoked, too. “It’s simply great news. Most welcome and exciting news,” he told me. The approval, he says, should help “achieve our collective goal to expedite the rollout of vaccine across the city. I think we’re only a number of months away from where all of us are going to be vaccinated.”
Don’t get me wrong: there is no shortage of things to worry about right now, from the transmission of so-called variants of concern to the provincial government’s sluggish rollout of its vaccine appointment portal. (Let’s face it, that thing should be up already.)
But I truly believe we are exiting the realm of being able to say, “I know someone with COVID-19” and entering the realm of being able to say far more frequently, “I know someone who was vaccinated against COVID-19.”
Should we have been able to say this weeks ago? Maybe. Probably. Yes. Blame whomever you want for the delay. Justin Trudeau, Vaccine manufacturers, Doug Ford, God himself — all of the above.
But just keep in your mind at all times, that one way or another we will get vaccinated. And by the time summer rolls around a great many more of us will have been so. There will be challenges, no doubt.
“This needs to be a seamless relay race from the feds to the province to the city,” says Coun. Joe Cressy, chair of the Toronto board of health. “The minute the province taps us on the shoulder, we’re ready. At the city level, the minute the supply is available we’re ready to get needles in arms.”
But there’s also cause for optimism, says Cressy. “We have a population that desperately wants this vaccine. We have a population that believes in science,” he says. “As frustrated as we all are, there is immense hope with the vaccine campaign that is to come.”
I’m not a total Pollyanna. I understand how awful this winter has been for so many and that so much of that awfulness might have been prevented with smarter government policy. I know what it’s like to mourn a loved one during COVID-19 at a pared down service that doesn’t do them justice.
But do yourself a favour and think for a minute about where we were at this time last year: at the onset of a deadly pandemic we knew little about, with no antidote. Now think about where we are today: on the verge of spring, awaiting multiple effective vaccines.
It could be worse.