Have we forgotten the dead? Globe and Mail

 Have we forgotten the dead?
Stevie Cameron

It is not often that I sign up to a newspaper just to respond to comments left by others.  However I felt the need to respond to this article.  I have Stevie Cameron's book, The Pickton File, which gives some wonderful background information on the missing women in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.  The comments are quite interesting.  Below is my response to some of the comments featured.

Cora


Thank you Stevie Cameron for a wonderfully written article. Everyday there is more and more violence towards women and even their children. I knew two of the women that Pickton has been found guilty of murder. These women are largely written as drug addicted prostitutes. What hasn't been acknowledged was the fact that these women were mothers, daughters, sisters...women who were loved and they had people that they loved.

In December of 1989, I had just given birth to my son who was in NICU (Neonatal ICU). I heard about the deaths of these young woman and wept. This was 13 years before Pickton and what was unearthed on his farm. I wept when the I heard about the Oklahoma bombing and again on 9/11.

It is our society that is accepting of violence as a way of life. Look at the bullying happening in the school yard and on the internet. Children are taking their own lives because of the "violence" being unleashed on them everyday.

I have noticed that women are often the targets as they are second class citizen. Women got the right to vote only last century (1929: Women found to be "persons" in Canada and therefore able to become members of the Senate. http://womenshistory.about.com/od/suffrage/a/intl_timeline.htm. The US was 1920: On August 26, a constitutional amendment is adopted when Tennessee ratifies it, granting full woman suffrage in all states of the United States.) Women were even considered "persons until October 1929. In most countries women still are not considered people they are property-chattle as it were. For society to change we need the non-person/non-human thinking to stop.

Thank you for keeping this issue in the forground, Stevie.

Sincerely yous

CraftyGal