By Cheryl Jahn

More needs to be done, even twenty years after

Jan 9, 2025 | 3:48 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – It was two decades ago the mothers, and sisters of missing and murdered women along Highway 16 made heart-wrenching pleas to hundreds at the CN centre.

It served as a catalyst to a series of events – even at a national level – to address the crisis of murdered and missing women along what became known as the Highway of Tears. One of those missing women is Ramona Wilson. Her sister Brenda has been an advocate in the thirty years since her disappearance.

“There’s just a lot more work to be done,” says Brenda. “There’s still so many people who go missing, so many people who are being murdered. So we really want to stress the safety that we need to provide for our communities along Highway 16 and all the communities in our province.”

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All those years ago, Brenda recalls the packed CN Centre and what unfolded was a series of recommendations – 33, in fact. And the most recent achievement is the inclusion of new cell towers along Highway 16.

“I’m so happy that Roger’s was able to come to the families, meet with the families and talk to them and find out why it was needed, why it’s so important to have that communication along Highway 16 and into the remote areas.”

Fifteen years after the symposium, another recommendation was fulfilled with bus service along the Highway.

And last October, the federal government announced funding to institute a Red Dress Alert pilot program, something the MP for the riding in question strongly supports.

“I’ve been pressing the federal government to bring in a pilot project in British Columbia,” says Taylor Bachrach, MP for Skeena-Bulkley. “There’s already a pilot project underway in Manitoba. That province, of course, needs it very badly as well. And so I’m hopeful that the provincial government and the federal government working together can get one up and running as soon as possible.”

But Brenda Wilson sums it up nicely.

“The bus service was 15 years [in the making]. This year it’s we have the towers lit up and that is like 18 years since those recommendations, since we started those recommendations. And it’s just, like, wow.”

But the message remains the same, despite the years that have passed. The plight of the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls cannot be forgotten.