‘You are so loved’: People gather to remember Christine Wood

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This article was published 11/04/2017 (2769 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Banners emblazoned with messages of love and Christine Wood’s smiling face led the way for nearly 200 people who took part in a march from the North End, near where she was slain in August, to downtown Winnipeg for a vigil late Wednesday afternoon.

Basking in sunshine and unseasonable warmth, her loved ones, friends, strangers, the Bear Clan Street Patrol, police and First Nations leaders marched carrying signs, posters, drums and flowers in homage to the 21-year-old woman from Oxford House Cree Nation who police on Monday confirmed dead. Her body has not been found.

“You are so loved, Christine,” said cards attached to artificial red roses handed out to women along the route from a St. Mary’s Parish on Burrows Avenue in the North End to Thunderbird House on Main Street downtown.

Looking exhausted but stoic, her parents George and Melinda Wood took part in the march alongside Winnipeg police Chief Danny Smyth, Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Derek Nepinak, and Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief Sheila North Wilson.

Before Wednesday’s march began, George Wood stood next to his wife Melinda and quietly said that he and his family are still reeling from the shock of learning this past week that their beloved Christine whom they’d reported missing last August was never coming home.

“It’s very hard for our family,” said the soft-spoken man. “My wife is heartbroken. I can’t really explain how it feels to lose a child like that — our only daughter, and our baby.” He called on Christine’s killer to tell police where her body is located.

“It’s the right thing to say where she is, her body” is, Wood said.

Christine Wood was in Winnipeg last August with her parents from Oxford House — Bunibonibee First Nation — for a medical appointment and staying at a hotel on Berry Street before she went missing.

Police said this week she was killed in a home at 341 Burrows Ave., not far from where the vigil began at St. Mary’s Parish.

Brett Ronald Overby, 30, has been charged with second-degree murder.

“This is not the outcome that anyone wanted,” North Wilson said in thanking police and everyone who spent months searching for Christine. “Our hearts are broken.”

She called on the accused to help Wood’s family by telling police the location of Christine’s remains.

“We plead with the man and his family to do the right thing and come forward and tell us where Christine is so she may be laid to rest properly,” North Wilson said.

“I know it’s hard to think of forgiveness right now but that’s where I’m looking — towards forgiveness at some point. And if it helps the family understand the situation — that we are not out for hatred. We’re here for love. We want Christine home,” she said.

Nepinak brought his young son and daughter to the march and said it is important for the community to rally and stand together.

“All of us are very, very deeply affected by what’s happened here. We all share in the grief and we all carry our own grief in what we witness happening in the streets,” Nepinak said.

He applauded the grieving Wood family’s strength in participating in the very-public event and “drawing much-needed attention to the tragedies that are unfolding.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca