Tribute to slain woman

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This article was published 02/06/2017 (2774 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Christine Wood’s relatives transformed a windswept prairie hollow near Dugald into a gravesite Saturday, marking it with solemn prayers, bright fuchsia flowers and a rendition of Amazing Grace.

Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief Sheila North Wilson and her sister Audrey North, accompanied by North Wilson’s close friend and advisor Jennifer Wood, conducted the poignant tribute at the request of Wood’s grieving parents in Bunibonibee Cree Nation, 575 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.

The Norths are Christine Wood’s cousins.

Wood’s parents are expected to travel to the city when their daughter’s remains are released early next week.

Winnipeg Police Chief Danny Smyth announced human remains — spotted by a farmer on Spruce Road south of Highway 15 Thursday — had been positively identified as being those of Wood.

He made the statement at a joint press conference the three women attended, the trio headed to the site immediately after the announcement.

Wood, 21, disappeared last August while on a family trip with her parents from Bunibonibee in Oxford House. Her inexplicable disappearance triggered a winter-long search by her distraught family and friends, who worked in shifts on trips from the north to scour the city from downtown to the outskirts.

Dugald, a 20-kilometre drive east from Winnipeg, was never the focus of the family searches.

Police got their first big break in the case in April, with the arrest of a 30-year old Winnipeg man Brett Ronald Overby, who was charged with second degree murder.

His home, in the 300 block of Burrows Avenue, was the focus of a five-day homicide investigation.

Overby faces his next court date Monday and police said they don’t anticipate charging anyone else.

Authorities believe Wood was murdered and concealed in the shallow grave within days of her disappearance. She was last seen alive Aug. 19 leaving a hotel near the airport where she was staying with her parents.

Family, friends and supporters of missing and murdered indigenous women held a highly publicized march after the arrest, winding their way from Burrows Avenue to the downtown Thunderbird House but at the time no body had been found.

Poignantly, one of the fuchsia silk roses with Wood’s photo, a keepsake from the vigil, was placed with the fresh blooms at the site of the shallow grave Saturday.

A farmer discovered Wood’s remains Thursday morning, in a ditch next to a field of crops.

Media reports accompanying the initial discovery said it appeared animals had exposed the remains so they were visible to the eye.

Police had previously collected DNA from Wood’s mother and it took very little time to confirm the identity of the remains, Police offered next to no details about the state of the remains when they recovered them.

Instead, the police chief focused on her family’s grief since the disappearance.

Smyth said he called Wood’s parents, Melinda and George Wood, immediately after forensic tests and autopsy results conclusively identified the remains were those of her daugther Friday night.

“I told George and Melinda, ‘I can’t begin to know your pain, but I will ensure Christine is returned home to you as soon as possible.'”

At the press conference, Sheila North Wilson addressed the family feelings and the broader issues.

Of Christine’s mother Melinda, North Wilson said, “She naturally has mixed emotions. She’s very happy that Christine has been found and of course she’s very sad that she’s gone. They always had a slim, slim faint hope she was alive somewhere,” she said.

“Now that we’ve come to this reality, they’ll have a bit of closure and a place to bring her home.”

As an indigenous leader, however, North Wilson said she could not understand how someone could commit murder and resume a life that looked perfectly normal from the outside afterward.

She told media she was informed the accused owned the home where police conducted extensive forensic investigations and was told he’d also owned a truck and held down a steady job.

“I wonder how on earth someone could ditch a human being in an open area like this,” North Wilson said, after the gravesite service.

She suggested a veil of normalcy may be part of the phenomenon behind the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women and as despite the choppy start, she indicated the national inquiry is the best shot Canada has right now of stopping the murders, by casting light on the victims as human beings.

“The difficulty with the inquiry (also) reflects what’s going on, because the people going through it are in a state of trauma and crisis,” North Wilson said.

“It’s not an easy process by any means, but it has to keep going because this phenomenon in Canada, this national tragedy, keeps happening. We have to find a way to stop the murder… of indigenous women and girls in this country,” North Wilson said.

At the gravesite, Audrey North sobbed openly and talked quietly about a butterfly seen fluttering over the shallow grave as the women arrived. North was the Winnipeg-based mainstay of the search parties, continuously behind the wheel, Wood’s parents her constant companions as the search carried on until April.

Tiny, with black-edged yellow wings, the butterfly appeared as the women walked to the gravesite and it stayed put for a brief moment over the shallow depression before wind gusts swept it away.

“We chose the butterfly as a theme for Christine’s memorial,” North said afterward. Oxford House held a community memorial for Christine following the arrest, an attempt to find solace and to provide a forum to pray for Wood to be found.

North said those prayers were answered this weekend and the butterfly was a symbol the search was over.

“Her mother chose the butterfly for the memorial and she said it was because butterflies’ feet just touch the ground before they rise up (and fly away.) And Christine was so young… and when we saw the butterfly here, it was significant,” North said.

Fuchsia, meanwhile, was Christine’s favourite colour. The stems of two bright bouquets were tucked under a bed of dried grass that covered up the gravesite.

Finally, the women threw their voices above the wind a cappella with the wanderers’ hymn Amazing Grace.

“The words are fitting to her situation, She was lost and now she’s found,” North Wilson said.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca