Missing teen’s mom walks to raise awareness for all
After living a mother’s nightmare for three years, Paula Bali hopes to raise awareness for all of Saskatchewan’s missing children and keep the story of her own missing daughter alive.
“We don’t want these children to be forgotten,” said Bali, noting this seems to be the fate of many children who have been missing for a long time.
“That, as a parent, is your worst fear, that your child is just going to be forgotten (as) some crime stat somewhere, and for us it’s so important that that doesn’t happen.”
Bali’s daughter Mekayla went missing in April 2016 at 16 years old. She was last seen at the Yorkton bus depot. Since then there have been hundreds of tips, but no solid leads. The Bali family has put up more than 6,000 posters across Canada and the U.S. seeking information.
To raise awareness of the province’s missing children and to honour Mekayla, Bali organized a Walk of Hope held Saturday afternoon in front of the Legislative Building. Around 30 people gathered — including many of Bali’s family and friends — to lay a bouquet of white carnations on the building’s front steps and to walk down Albert Street to the Royal Saskatchewan Museum.
“We just wanted to do an event today that honoured Mekayla and the other missing children in this province,” said Bali.
Saturday also marked International Missing Children’s Day.
This is the first time Bali has organized a walk in Regina, although she has put on the event in her hometown of Yorkton in the past. She said she wanted to bring the event to Regina to increase awareness and hopefully inspire government change around the supports available to those who have had a loved one go missing.
“There’s a lot of things that are lacking and I think that until we look at making more resources available for missing children and their families, the situation isn’t going to get any better,” she said, noting she would specifically like to see more counselling services for family members.
Bali also hopes parents will become more aware of what they can do to prevent their own children from going missing. With this in mind, she included a children’s ID clinic as part of the events after the walk, where parents could create an identity booklet with information police might find helpful if their child were to ever go missing.
She hopes no one else has to go through the pain she has been through, but knows she is not the only person missing a child.
“If it could happen to Mekayla, it could happen to anyone’s child. You know, she just didn’t have a lot of risk factors and was really a very stable person,” said Bali. “We’ve gotten to the point now, and it sounds so awful, you just want to know if she’s alive. And that’s a really difficult question that you grapple with every single day.”