‘Families have been asking for help for a long time’
OTTAWA— On Wednesday, the federal government revealed details of its promised inquiry into missing and murdered women. Here are four stories from families and friends who lost loved ones. Diane Hardy Fifty years ago this month, Doreen Hardy’s body was found outside of Thunder Bay. Her sister, Diane Hardy, said there is “no justice, no closure to this. Nothing.”
Doreen’s murder remains unsolved. She was last seen getting into a latemodel Oldsmobile along with Jane Bernard, who was also found dead and whose murder also remains unsolved.
“Everyone in my family is all over 65 now. It gets hard. A lot of people say it (the pain) goes away but it doesn’t,” said Hardy, who was one of three female drummers from Thunder Bay who opened the ceremony at the Museum of History. Sharon Johnson Sharon Johnson’s sister Sandra, 18, was found in February 1992 on a frozen Thunder Bay waterway by a man walking his dog.
“As I was listening to everyone talking, it is kind of like their voices were fading away. My own thoughts were flooding in about all the hurt and everything I have seen over the years. If we never lost Sandra that way, maybe our lives would be in a better place,” Johnson said.
She wore a T-shirt bearing her sister’s image to the inquiry’s launch on Wednesday. “Even though we don’t know who was responsible for Sandra’s death, being here and being a part of this, hearing what was said here today, it kind of feels like a little bit of closure, I guess. But I don’t know what that feels like.” Bridget Tolley Bridget’s mother, Gladys Tolley of the Kitigan Zibi First Nation in Maniwaki, Que., was struck and killed in 2001 by a Sûreté du Québec police cruiser. It was deemed an accident, but her daughter has been seeking an in- dependent probe ever since. She hopes the inquiry will help bring answers and closure.
“We need help. Families have been asking for help for a long time. We want our cases looked at. We want justice,” an emotional Tolley said as she clutched a large photo of her mother.
“We want to bring home our missing. We want to solve the unsolved,” she said. Denise Maloney-Pictou Denise Maloney-Pictou’s mother, Annie Mae Pictou, was found dead in 1976 along the edge of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. She was an activist and leader in the American Indian Movement.
“This is a historic day,” MaloneyPictou said, acknowledging the families of murdered and missing women were supportive of this next phase of the inquiry.