Northern BC’s lack of comprehensive inter-provincial transportation putting communities’ most vulnerable at risk
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PRINCE GEORGE – ‘The Highway of Tears’, as it’s known around the world thanks to it’s sinister reputation, has a long, and well documented history of indigenous women and girls disappearing along it’s 725km stretch. Many vanish without a trace, others are found dead, days, months or even years later. Many of the victims this Highway have claimed, tend to have a common theme connecting their untimely ends: the last time they were seen alive, they were hitchhiking along a desolate stretch of an isolated road, far too often, alone.
It’s something you’ve no doubt seen for yourself if you spent any time travelling Highway 16 east or west between Prince Rupert and Prince George, a lone silhouette on the shoulder of the road, frantically waving down on-coming traffic: a last resort for many rural residents desperate not to miss an appointment in the next town over, but left at the mercy of an infrequent bus schedule. For others, hitchhiking is their only option to access distant services, when they dont own a car themselves, can’t rent one, and cant afford an expensive stays at a hotel along the way.
