Angel, Serena, Melli, Widow, Call and Daddy Dave are my own invention. But inside my made-up story is much that is true.
It is true that a young girl is commonly lured into prostitution because the man she thinks is her boyfriend turns out to be a pimp. Sometimes he is the one who introduces her to street drugs. Often, once she is “turned out,” she takes drugs to help her tolerate the lifestyle. She stays for many reasons: because she must feed her addiction, because she is afraid she will be beaten or killed if she leaves, or because her pimp has threatened to hurt her family members if she leaves. Each girl’s story is different.
It is true that, beginning in 1983, a number of women disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, an area notorious for its poverty, open drug use and high rate of HIV infection—one of the highest in the world. Most but not all of the women who vanished from the Eastside were sex workers. Over the next thirteen years, families and friends filed missing-persons reports, giving reasons why they thought their loved ones were not just missing but dead. Nothing was done.
In 1997, the same year that eleven more women went missing, Robert William “Willy” Pickton handcuffed and attacked a sex worker, who fled naked with knife wounds to her stomach. The charges against Pickton were stayed, however, because the sex worker was not considered a reliable witness. She cannot be named because a court ban prohibits using her real name.
In 1998, an additional ten women went missing. Police were told that bloody clothing and a number of women’s purses, complete with ID, had been seen lying around Pickton’s farm. That same year the Vancouver Police Department issued a news release saying that law enforcement officers did not believe a serial killer was behind the disappearances.
By the time Pickton was arrested in 2002, nineteen more women had been reported missing. Investigators found on his farm the remains and the DNA of thirty-two of the missing women. Pickton admitted to the murders of forty-nine women; he was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for twenty-five years.
I respectfully acknowledge that the names I use on pages 49 and 117 refer to several of the real missing women: Debra Jones, Dawn Crey, Dianne Rock, Sarah de Vries and Janet Henry.
The Missing Women of
Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside*
Yvonne Abigosis
Sereena Abotsway
Sharon Abraham
Elaine Allenbach
Angela Arseneault
Sherry Baker
Cindy Beck
Yvonne Boen
Andrea Borhaven
Heather Bottomley
Heather Chinnock
Nancy Clark
Wendy Crawford
Dawn Crey
Sarah de Vries
Sheryl Donahue
Tiffany Drew
Elaine Dumba
Sheila Egan
Cara Ellis
Gloria Fedyshyn
Cynthia Feliks
Marnie Frey
Jennifer Furminger
Catherine Gonzalez
Rebecca Guno
Michelle Gurney
Inga Hall
Helen Hallmark
Ruby Hardy
Janet Henry
Tanya Holyk
Sherry Irving
Angela Jardine
Patricia Johnson
Debra Jones
Catherine Knight
Kerry Koski
Marie Laliberte
Stephanie Lane
Danielle Larue
Kellie Little
Verna Littlechief
Laura Mah
Jacquelene McDonell
Diana Melnick
Leigh Miner
Marilyn Moore
Jackie Murdock
Georgina Papin
Tania Petersen
Sherry Rail
Dianne Rock
Elsie Sebastian
Ingrid Soet
Teresa Triff
Sharon Ward
Kathleen Wattley
Olivia Williams
Taressa Williams
Mona Wilson
Brenda Wolfe
Frances Young
Julie Young
* Sources: missingpeople.net and Missing Women Task Force list, 2007
Thanks
I wish to express my deep gratitude to Candace Fisher, Sarah Gough, Stephen Roxburgh, Julie Larios and Brenda Bowen, who gave me guidance and much-needed encouragement as I wrote this book. I am always grateful to my family, who inspire me in my work. I am especially indebted to my brilliant editors Margaret Ferguson and Shelley Tanaka. Thanks also to the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts for their timely support.
Martine Leavitt
About the Publisher
Groundwood Books, established in 1978, is dedicated to the production of children’s books for all ages, including fiction, picture books and non-fiction. We publish in Canada, the United States and Latin America. Our books aim to be of the highest possible quality in both language and illustration. Our primary focus has been on works by Canadians, though we sometimes also buy outstanding books from other countries.
Many of our books tell the stories of people whose voices are not always heard in this age of global publishing by media conglomerates. Books by the First Peoples of this hemisphere have always been a special interest, as have those of others who through circumstance have been marginalized and whose contribution to our society is not always visible. Since 1998 we have been publishing works by people of Latin American origin living in the Americas both in English and in Spanish under our Libros Tigrillo imprint.
We believe that by reflecting intensely individual experiences, our books are of universal interest. The fact that our authors are published around the world attests to this and to their quality. Even more important, our books are read and loved by children all over the globe.