The Other End End of of the the Rainbow Rainbow Kourtney Roy
The Other End End of of the the Rainbow Rainbow Kourtney Roy
The Other End of the Rainbow Kourtney Roy 1
The Other End End of of the the Rainbow Rainbow Kourtney Roy 2
The Other End of the Rainbow Kourtney Roy 3
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New Hazelton Kitwanga Kitseguecla Witset [Moricetown] Smithers Terrace Houston Prince Rupert
Burns Lake Fraser Lake
Vanderhoof Prince George
Quesnel 12
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Highway 16 is a 720km stretch of highway traversing Northern British Columbia between the remote industrial township and former fur trading posts of Prince George and Prince Rupert. For over forty years, women and girls have disappeared along this rugged and lonely route and its intersecting highways, earning it the tragic name, the ‘Highway of Tears’. Most, but not all of the victims have been of First Nations descent. This systemic violence is still met with indifference, neglect and outright racism by the general public and the police, the disappearance and murder of white women and girls generally accruing more media and police attention than the plight of their Native sisters.
I spent my childhood being shuttled back and forth between the rustic interior mountains of British Columbia and a small city in Northern Ontario. I come from a white, working-class family of truck drivers, social workers, housewives and tree loggers. As a young girl in the 1990s I grew up under the media frenzy of the brutal rape, torture and murder of three young girls – Tammy Homolka, Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French – by the serial killers Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka 2 . These horrific slayings shook my safe and innocent world. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, an equally shocking tragedy had been unfolding across Canada, one with deep and painful roots in colonial violence, racism and misogyny.
Only through the tireless work of the families and friends of the missing and murdered, of Native and women’s rights activists, has this epidemic of violence recently garnered national and international attention. The Highway of Tears is not an isolated incident: sadly, similar situations have unfolded over the years across Canada. The UN has called the nation-wide violence against Indigenous women and girls in Canada a genocide and in 2015 asked for a public enquiry into the atrocity 1.
As a photographer you carry a certain burden of choosing what to capture; whether by bearing witness to atrocities or constructing a fiction. There is a modern specter of appropriation and representation that haunts the attempts to photographically engage with a subject outside of your immediate social, racial, economic, gender, religious and cultural group. “Stay in your lane” is the mantra meant for those who would assume to know and understand the complexities of a place or culture that is not their own.
1. Frances The Canadian Press March 6, 2015. “UN Calls on Canada for Inquiry into Missing, Murdered Aboriginal Women.” Macleans.ca, 6 Mar. 2015, www.macleans.ca/ politics/un-committee calls-on-canada-for inquiry-into-missingmurdered-aboriginalwomen/.
2. “Paul Bernardo.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 12 June 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Paul_Bernardo.
I wondered when I started working on this project if what I was trying to express would be seen as somehow inappropriate or unreliable from an artistphotographer known more for presenting hyper-real, fictional portrayals of fantastical worlds and their inhabitants. But the significance of the tragic events occurring on the highway were much more important than my own fears of being accused of misrepresentation. I wanted to move beyond my usual sphere; to enter the daily reality of those whose lives were on Highway 16; to gain a glimmer of comprehension of what their lives have been, and continue to be like, even if it was problematic and questionable. In fact, for those very reasons I felt compelled to go.
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My first trip to Highway 16 was in October 2017 and the first of 5 journeys. I returned to my home country with a camera and binder full of carefully researched information based on several in-depth books on the highway’s missing and murdered, especially Ray Michalko’s Obstruction of Justice 3 , as well as a plethora of articles and documents gleaned online. There are 18 women and girls on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s (RCMP) E-PANA list, a limited and often criticized police compendium of the murdered and missing along Highways 16, 5 and 97 4.
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3. Michalko, Ray. Obstruction of Justice: The Search for Truth on Canada’s Highway of Tears. Markham, Red Deer, 2016. 4. Government of Canada, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. “Working Together to End Violence Against Indigenous Women and Girls National Scan of RCMP Initiatives May 2017.” Working Together to End Violence Against Indigenous Women and Girls National Scan of RCMP Initiatives May 2017 / Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 5 July 2017, www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/ working-together-endviolence-indigenouswomen-and-girls-nationalscan-rcmp-initiativesmay-2017. Of Project E-PANA, the website states; — The victim was female; — The victim was engaged in one or more ‘high risk’ behaviours, i.e., behaviours which would tend to place them in the control of strangers in isolated environments without witnesses, easy avenues
Shockingly, I discovered that the majority of victims were not on the E-PANA list, simply because the circumstances of their death or disappearance did not meet the limited criteria set out by the RCMP. It is important to note here that the Native communities of Canada regard the RCMP with deep suspicion and mistrust, owing to the RCMP’s violent history of suppression and racial policing of the Indigenous peoples of Canada, in order to enforce the government’s agenda of colonization 5. As such there exists a tense and highly problematic relationship, because the same police force that intimidated Native communities for so long is now tasked with solving their loved ones’ disappearance and murder.
of escape or sources of assistance. Primary examples of this would be hitchhiking alone or prostitution; — The victim went missing from, or her body was found near, Highway 16 from Prince Rupert to Hinton, Highway 97 from Merritt to Fort Nelson, or Highways 5 and 24 connecting Valemount and 100 Mile House; and, — The evidence indicated a stranger attack, i.e., no suspect was seen or identifiable and there was no grounds to believe that death was the result of suicide, misadventure or domestic violence.
The seemingly subjective nature of this list eerily echoed the challenge I faced in selecting how I would present such a disturbing story photographically. This necessarily led to looking beyond the listed 18, revealing a world where violence and grief were familiar underpinnings of daily life. I wanted to avoid the trappings of a comprehensive, purportedly objective story on the Highway of Tears and to imbue the work with a deliberately subjective and ambiguous form of image making and storytelling. I was not searching for a singular ‘truth’ behind the atrocities. Instead I wanted to present a multi-faceted image of a complex and tragic, yet beautiful place. The Genius Loci, or ‘genius of a place’ is that quality that gives a particular area, whether a town, clearing, region or roadway, its meaning. In this sense Highway 16 does not lead to a place; it is a place in its own right, imbued with a particular sense of history and presence through the ongoing atrocities committed along its length. I was intrigued by how the vernacular and social architecture of this specific highway had been influenced by its dark history and systematically unexplained violence. My perception of the indifferent landscape was slowly transforming. Did the endless roadside forests bear witness to unspeakable disturbances? Were all these anonymous and prosaic gas stations, hotels and rest stops now polluted with something altogether more ominous?
5. Gerster, Jane. “The RCMP Was Created to Control Indigenous People. Can That Relationship Be Reset?” Global News, 15 June 2301, 7 a.m., globalnews. ca/news/5381480/ rcmp-indigenousrelationship/.
When I returned to the region two months later, I progressively gathered more archival information. I also began to build upon and forge new relationships with locals I met while photographing: Along the way I met people at gas stations, diners, bars and truck stops. Catastrophically many of these bystanders had family members or friends who were among the missing and murdered. It was apparent that the tragedies left no one unscathed; that it was not only women and girls who were missing and murdered, but men and boys, too.
The people presented in this book generously and openly shared their stories and experiences with me. Their knowledge of the region’s vast forests, roadways and infrastructure was essential in allowing me to find site-specific locations that were related to the tragedies (either their own or of others they knew). I am grateful for their strength and bravery in sharing their overwhelmingly tragic stories with me and I ardently hope their advocacy helps to bring about justice and transformation to the ongoing situation.
As I became more familiar with the region, I realised that the project was also being shaped by the personal stories of those who I had befriended. Their lives on the highway vacillated between the harrowing and touching. But despite the cruelties and travesties that they had endured, they also radiated courage. On my third trip I decided to see where it would lead me if I actively began to seek out the friends and family of the murdered and the missing.
More often than not, the places where many of these bodies had been found were unmarked. They were ordinary places, overlooked and inconspicuous. The banality of the sites was disturbing and heartbreaking. It was this ‘ordinariness’ that I wanted to photograph; to reveal the unintentional and marginal details of the road and imbue the places with a sense of disquiet and ambiguity. The shadow of what had transpired along its route was tapping its spider legs against the glass jar of my imagination.
There were many people who I did not find or who kept to themselves, understandably preferring not to have their privacy disturbed and their tragedies laid bare for the eyes of a stranger. This suited me, as I was not trying to create a comprehensive analysis of every victim on the highway. I was interested in seeing what the highway revealed to me as a traveler relying on chance and possibilities, so I stuck to where I felt I was tolerated.
On later trips, after photographing each day and being told one harrowing tale after another, I would often head back to my hotel and barricade the door. The headlights from passing cars shining into my room at night would awaken me with a pounding heart: I started to imagine that cars were following me, that my presence had been noticed. From theories of widespread sexual exploitation and violence by the RCMP, to serial killer truck drivers and drug dealer hits gone wrong, I had been told tales of such brutality and horror that my thoughts spiralled into paranoia and fear. I wondered, as others have, if there is a larger conspiracy behind these lost women? The next morning, I would head out again, my night-time terrors having temporarily dispersed with the sun rising on the mountains. This indifferent, yet familiar landscape endlessly beckoned me to question the unresolved secrets and tragedies unfolding along its path.
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New Hazelton Kitwanga Kitseguecla Witset [Moricetown] Smithers Terrace Houston Prince Rupert
Burns Lake Fraser Lake
Vanderhoof Prince George
Quesnel 20
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Everything watches you, the observed observer.
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Deena Lynn Braem was 16 years old when she was last seen alive hitchhiking to her home in Bouchie Lake from Quesnel on September 25, 1999. Her body was found in a gravel pit on December 10, 1999 north west of Quesnel near Pinnacles Provincial Park. 32
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Smoke is low and conceals everything. The fires in the area are moving closer. Time to leave.
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In the early hours of Thanksgiving morning in 1999, Lonnie says he witnessed several local RCMP officers murder Deena Lynn Braem, a young woman who had been missing for several weeks from the area. While fleeing the scene he heard several shotgun blasts. Lonnie then called 911, telling the dispatcher that he had heard the blasts, but he did not reveal what he had seen for fear of placing his life in danger. Three years later the RCMP attacked him in his home. He narrowly escaped by hiding in the forest all night. Since then Lonnie alleges that the police have made 21 attempts on his life in an effort to silence him. 40
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who ever tried to help him were either discredited or dead within 6 months.
Lonnie told me that all the people ...
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I went to that symposium in Prince George and listened to the stories there and this woman, she phoned the RCMP. Her daughter hadn’t returned home and she was supposed to be home at a certain time. She knew where her daughter was going. She could see car headlights across Burns Lake and that’s where her daughter was supposed to be, and the cops refused to go there. That’s where they found her body, exactly where those headlights were in … they found her the next day. I mean, there are too many connections to these cops to dismiss it.
Yes, she [Deena Lynn Braem], went missing September 25th, and I had seen the murder two weeks later. It was Thanksgiving morning actually, when I had seen that. But it was three days before I had seen the murder that I was laying at my friend’s along the Fraser River, on his couch in the house and I watched this meteor pass right through the smoke or the steam of the pulp mill.
I feel like what’s happening to me has given me an armor, but inside me it’s also caused a wound that I can’t close. It’s like it’s bleeding behind the armor. In one way it’s terrifying, in another way it’s empowering.
Three nights before they tried to come and murder me in my house, there was another meteor or a satellite. It exploded over my gate.
August 2018
Crooked cops, no empathy. Like, over there [in Manitoba] they take the Indians out and they take them over the bush and they tie them to a tree, the cops do, and I mean there is hundreds of reported cases of it.
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I think there is a lot of sexual predators within the RCMP because they have their delusion of control. That’s what I believe. I’m a man and I’m not scared of too many things, but they scared me. When they hunted me they scared me. But one of these young girls that they are preying on? They haven’t got a chance, they haven’t got a voice, they have absolutely no rights, and I thought we all had human rights.
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These Mounties are not Mounties.
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It isn’t coincidental that the situation of three of the girls that we know, the one that got murdered and the two that went missing came from Quesnel, and the last time they were seen was in a police car heading north. These are just kids. I mean, they are not old people. The thing is with these Indian girls, they’re living on the Highway of Tears, and coming from Prince Rupert or Smithers or any place like that. They’re a free spirit people. I mean, they don’t think nothing about getting out and walking. If they decide they were going to walk to Prince George they’d get out on the road with a little bag and away they’d go. They were taught to trust the cops, which we were taught too when we were in school and our parents taught us. If you ever need help, you know, you go to a policeman, and he will help you. Obviously, that’s not happening.
If a Mountie in his car stopped and offered to give them a ride, they wouldn’t hesitate to get in the car. And all the stories of what these people have said and, you know, had first hand action in, all point to the same thing, that the Mounties are not doing anything for people. They are not doing nothing.
Ellen, Lonnie’s Mom
August 2018
I have got no more use for Mounties [Royal Canadian Mounted Police], especially with the things that are going on with the Highway of Tears where are all these young girls are being killed. They don’t seem to care. You can give them the evidence and they don’t seem to listen.
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Lonnie does not have a cell phone, nor does he use the internet. Partly out of fear of being followed and partly because the objects malfunction whenever he is around them.
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My mind was boggled with this information. Exhaustion and paranoia were fighting for control of my brain.
He said I would be safe because I was here only taking pictures.
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He took me to his cabin where he told me he had been attacked by the police. It only dawned on me once we were out there that I was in the middle of nowhere with a strange man and a rifle.
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New Hazelton Kitwanga Kitseguecla Witset [Moricetown] Smithers Terrace Houston Prince Rupert
Burns Lake Fraser Lake
Vanderhoof Prince George
Quesnel 60
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Aielah Saric-Auger was just 14 years old when she disappeared on February 2, 2006. Her body was found dumped in a ditch near Tabor Mountain. Witnesses say Saric-Auger was last seen walking North on Quince Street in Prince George in the early hours of February 3, 2006. Her killer has never been caught. 62
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The sun cast a dazzling eye over the world,
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its indifferent rays causing a billion snow crystals to shimmer and sparkle.
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The only other people out and about seemed to be boozers and addicts.
I wandered around downtown for a while, the light was shit.
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Solitude suits me more than I would have thought. 10 more days on the highway ‌ is that loneliness I feel?
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Helen Claire Frost was 17 years old when she went out for a walk in Prince George on October 13, 1970. She never returned. Witnesses say she was last seen hitchhiking south from the Husky Gas Station in Prince George. 96
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15-year-old Alisha (Leah) Germaine was last seen in December 1994 at a Christmas dinner at the Native Friendship Centre in Prince George. She was later found slain in an elementary schoolyard near to Highway 16. 98
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24-year-old Nicole Hoar had been working as a tree planter in Prince George in June 2002, when she decided to surprise her sister with a birthday visit in Smithers. She planned to hitchhike to her sister’s place. She never arrived. Hoar was last seen at a gas station east of Prince George. 100
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Tony had worked for years as a volunteer with the Prince George Victim Services when he set up a memorial website for the missing and murdered on the highway in 2005. Eventually he expanded the website to include all of Canada. He no longer runs the website. 102
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Tony
January 2018
Well, I think it was because at the time when I was working in victim services I kept seeing all the hurt that came in the community and we have that in all our communities, right? It’s not only here. I learned that some of those are missing and families never got any closure. Then I heard just the name itself, Highway of Tears. All of a sudden it clicked that I’ve got to try and do something to help. My first website that I started was The Doors of Hope, when there was very few resources. At that point it just struck me that the families were not getting that much help and their stories weren’t getting out there and that was my main purpose, to have them tell their stories. So I was close in touch with a lot of the families at the time and they would send me their stories. Subsequently, I began with all the media stories on the site as well to keep people as updated as possible.
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New Hazelton Kitwanga Kitseguecla Witset [Moricetown] Smithers Terrace Houston Prince Rupert
Burns Lake Fraser Lake
Vanderhoof Prince George
Quesnel 108
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There is a fountain at the reception of two bears frolicking around a waterfall.
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I drove through a graveyard that was right beside the hospital. Convenient.
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The trick is to drink by yourself in the evenings to pass the time and numb the loneliness and paranoia.
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Madison Scott was 20 years old when she disappeared from her campsite during the early morning hours of a friend’s birthday party at Hogsback Lake on May 28, 2011. She has not been seen since. 122
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New Hazelton Kitwanga Kitseguecla Witset [Moricetown] Smithers Terrace Houston Prince Rupert
Burns Lake Fraser Lake
Vanderhoof Prince George
Quesnel 130
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The world burns all to hell and all I see is smoke.
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The clerk working at the Chevron must wonder
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why I am always wearing the same clothes when I come in.
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I survived another Russian roulette of weather, driving and not fucking disappearing.
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I have been sleeping in my car in a trailer park frequented by bears and drug dealers.
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Shovel Lake wildfire lit up the trees like matches. The sky reflecting the magical shitstorm unfolding before my eyes.
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I stop in to see Crystal at the hair salon.
She asks the lady whose hair she is doing if she remembers the name of the girl killed around there years ago. The woman replies, “Which girl?
There have been dozens of young girls killed around here over the years.�
A lady at the salon says her nephew has been missing for 10 months.
No one knows what happened to him.
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Crystal comes from Quesnel, but has been living in the Fraser Lake area for several years. She lives with her four children and works two jobs. She was friends with Deena Lynn Braem at the time of her murder in 1999. Crystal’s father was jailed for the murder of her mother’s boyfriend. He was eventually released when the murdered man’s son confessed to the crime. Her brother, now deceased, was convicted of manslaughter in the death of Brent Melanson in 2004. 178
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I think there’s more to it than what the government and people are saying. I think there are other bodies out there. There are bodies that they still haven’t found.
Crystal
There are many out there in the woods, but there are many other women that are just drug addicts, or they have no family, or they’ve hit rock bottom and nobody knows.
October 2017
My mother-in-law, who is 87 years old, tells me going past the swamp that she believes there are dead bodies in that swamp. I asked her why she thinks that, and she says because of rumours and her feelings are that there have been truckers here.
I really thought in my heart that my dad actually killed somebody for a long time, but then the guy who [was murdered] had a son, who had a huge bust in his house for drugs and he admitted to the cops that he was the one. He said to the cops, “I’m going to do to you what I did to my dad.” So they did a lie detector on him and it came out that yes, he did do it 100%, and my dad was released and taken out of jail.
Of course, everybody mistreated me when I was at school. “Oh there’s the girl whose dad murdered that guy.” “There’s the girl’s handicapped dad.” “There’s the girl there, her dad was a handicap who killed that guy that was across the highway.”
People always say it was probably a truck driver or someone always on the road, in that area, or someone who knows the bush, but why? We talk for days and hours and hours about why would they go all the way up and around to find one little spot? Did they take her? Did they beat her? Did they rape her? Her family just wants to know who it was. My dad was charged with first-degree murder. My mom was having an affair with this guy and my dad called him up and she left my dad and my dad said, “I’m going to kill you, come over there and shoot you fucking dead.”
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You have to watch what you’re doing, especially with hitchhiking.
August 2018
In Prince George there was two guys, a father and a son, that kidnapped a young lady, held her hostage, took her up about half an hour from town, dragged her into the bush and proceeded to stab her with a machete and they dropped it, it was dark, and she ran for her life and she ran and she ran and she hid as she was bleeding.
[She told me] “As soon as that fucking knife fell they were trying to find it.” So she fucking ran and she goes, “I was running, no shoes, in a mini skirt, worst feeling of my life. My life was in front of me.” They [her attackers] finally got the vehicle, they were driving round trying to find her, she was laying against a log, she felt the blood, stood there half naked.
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