Families share anguish at national inquiry
Chief Vivian Tom and her husband thought about killing themselves after their daughter was slain, but the sweet sound of their granddaughter’s laughter gave them the will to live.
Tom testified during an emotional first day of hearings in British Columbia for the much-delayed national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women, sobbing as she talked about her daughter Destiny Rae Tom and the victim’s little girl, Cassidy.
“When this happened with Destiny, we were lying there — we were talking about suicide,” said Tom, the chief of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation in Burns Lake.
“Then we heard Cassidy laughing. She was only three years old when her mom was killed. … We decided there and then that we couldn’t give up.
“We had someone that we had to raise.”
Destiny was 21 when her badly beaten and frozen body was found March 23, 2013, on the Nadleh reserve, near Fraser Lake. Her common-law partner Garrett George pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to eight years in jail.
Tom continues to raise Cassidy, who is now seven, but said the young girl is often bullied because she is not being raised by her parents.
“It’s been rough — really, really hard. Sometimes I get scared that I’ll forget how Destiny looked, but I’ll never forget her because she was the kindest person and was always there for me,” Tom told the inquiry, held in Smithers at a native friendship centre that was decorated with handmade quilts to honour the victims.
Smithers is between Prince Rupert and Prince George on Highway 16, dubbed the Highway of Tears because dozens of girls and women have disappeared over the last four decades along that road and other northern routes.
The first person to testify Tuesday was Vicki Hill, who told the inquiry that she has no memory of her mother, who was murdered when Hill was a baby.
“I was six months old when she died,” Hill said quietly. “I never knew her, but in my eyes she gave me life.”
Mary Jane Hill, a mother of four, was found dead along Highway 16 east of Prince Rupert on March 26, 1978, at the age of 31.
Hill lamented that her mother didn’t live to attend loved ones’ graduations or weddings.
“She won’t be there for any special occasion, period, and that’s not fair. She didn’t deserve this whatsoever. She had children to look after. She had siblings. She wasn’t there to see her grandchildren be born. And this is all tough, and now I’m the one who has to deal with it,” Hill said.
The room was packed with other victims’ relatives to hear Hill’s testimony.
“I’m not just speaking for my mom, I speak for the rest of the families. I feel their pain, I feel their hurt. I can see it,” she said, weeping. “Something has to be done. We are talking about lives. We are talking about human beings.”
Many of the victims disappeared while hitchhiking. Even today, Hill said, there is no cell service between Prince Rupert and Terrace, or billboards warning against hitchhiking. To get from Smithers to Prince Rupert by bus, she has to be at the depot at 3 a.m., which she says isn’t safe for women and girls.
Tom Chipman testified that his daughter Tamara, 22, went missing while hitchhiking near Prince Rupert in September 2005. Her body was never found.
“We searched for over two months. … Over time the search team got smaller and smaller, but we kept going,” Chipman said.
Tamara had a young son, Jaden, who about a year before her disappearance was temporarily placed with his great-aunt after an accident involving his father.
Chipman said the family believes social services took too long to return custody of the boy to Tamara and that she subsequently fell into an unsafe lifestyle.
Many of the families linked to missing and murdered Indigenous women have complained about how they were treated by the child welfare and justice systems.
Tom said she was devastated as a mother to have police tell her she couldn’t hug her slain daughter, being forced instead to stay far away from the yellow tarp covering Destiny’s body on a frozen, muddy roadside. Then, while praying in church, Tom said a vision came to her — one that has helped her to heal.
“I went to her and lifted the tarp and crawled underneath,” Tom recalled about her vision.
“I grabbed her in my arms and said, ‘Destiny, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for what happened to you. I love you and miss you. I’m so sorry that you were all alone when this happened. I’m so sorry that we weren’t there to protect you.’ ”
“I told her, ‘We’ll look after Cassidy the best that we can. We love her just like we love you.’ ”
Forty people are registered to speak over three days in Smithers, although the commissioners only heard from four of them on Tuesday.