WINNIPEG — Under a dark December night sky, a collage of photos taped to a billboard rests against a tree illuminated only by the light of a sea of candles.
Each of the photos depicts a smiling Morgan Harris at different points in her short life.
This is how Cambria Harris, 21, wants the public to remember her mother.
“I want her to be remembered as happy-go-lucky. She was silly. She was fun. People loved to be around her,” she said Thursday evening during a vigil.
Winnipeg police say Harris, 39, is one of four woman allegedly killed by Jeremy Skibicki this past spring.
On Thursday, police announced Skibicki was charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Harris, Marcedes Myran, 26, and an unidentified woman.
He was initially charged with first-degree murder on May 18 and kept in custody after the partial remains of Rebecca Contois, 24, were found in a garbage bin near an apartment building. Police later found the rest of her remains in a Winnipeg landfill.
Contois lived in Winnipeg but was a member of O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi First Nation, also known as Crane River.
The bodies of the three latest alleged victims have not been found.
Police believe the unidentified woman is also Indigenous.
Dozens of people gathered outside Skibicki’s residence to honour the four women hours after police announced the additional charges.
“I think it’s amazing that we’re able to come together like this, but I don’t think it should have to be like this. There comes a point where we have to say that this needs to stop,” Cambria Harris said.
“This is a genocide happening to our Indigenous women. We’re going missing left and right, and I’m not going to be next. My daughter’s not going to be next. Something needs to change.”
Harris was a mother of five and a grandmother to one. Police previously reported she was last seen on May 1. They said Thursday she was likely killed around that same time.
“I know that she loved her children and she did the best she could with what she had. I think about just how unfair that it ended like this,” Kirstin Witwicki, Harris’ cousin, said during the vigil.
Witwicki admired her cousin’s “huge spirit.”
“She had the soul of a UFC fighter. She was fearless and scared of no one,” she said.
Police said Harris, Myran and Contois were killed in May.
They said a fourth woman is thought to have been killed on or about March 15, 2022. They released a photo of a jacket similar to one she had been wearing.
“It’s always unsettling whenever there is any kind of a serial killing,” said Winnipeg police Chief Danny Smyth.
“It does involve Indigenous women. We’re very sensitive to the whole missing and murdered Indigenous women investigation and inquiry and the recommendations that came out of that.”
Smyth would not say whether the women were targeted because they were Indigenous.
Police released few details about their investigation, but said they have no leads to any other potential victims.
They said they are not searching the landfill for the bodies of the three women and would not say whether they were looking anywhere else.
Melissa Normand, another of Harris’ cousins, wants the police to change their minds.
“That’s unfair. Our family deserves to have Morgan back and placed at peace.”
Investigators believe Skibicki acted alone and there is no threat to public safety.
“He was arrested as soon as we were aware of what was going on. He has been housed in a correctional facility since that time, and he has, not to my knowledge, been released at any given moment,” said Insp. Shawn Pike.
Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham offered his condolences.
“Anger and sorrow — that mix — is what I’m feeling right now, and I think that many in our city are going to be feeling the same,” he said.
Community supports have been offered to both families, said Angie Tuesday, a family support and resource advocate with the police.
“This is a tremendously difficult time for both these families that we’re discussing today, as well as all the families of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and two-spirit and gender-diverse people in Manitoba. I want to let people know that we are thinking of you, and our hearts are with you at this time.”
The Southern Chiefs’ Organization offered its condolences to the family, friends and First Nations of the victims.
“We will be keeping you in our thoughts and prayers as you grapple with the news that your loved ones have been taken from us in such a violent way,” Grand Chief Jerry Daniels said in a statement.
Long Plain Chief Kyra Wilson called for resources and support for women, girls, two-spiritand gender-diverse people.
Nahanni Fontaine, the Manitoba NDP justice critic, visited with Harris’ family on Thursday morning.
“It is devastating to see the heartbreak from family. It’s devastating to be standing here again to be having these conversations again. It’s devastating to be standing here begging society to take this issue seriously,” she said in a speech later in the day.
After months of searching for her mother, Cambria Harris said the family is left to grieve again.
“I find peace and I find closure being able to be here today and say they did find something but we’re still not done.”
— With files from Steve Lambert
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 1, 2022.
Nova Scotia RCMP say their investigation into two suspicious deaths earlier this month has concluded that one man died by homicide and the other by suicide.
The bodies of two men, aged 40 and 73, were found in a home in Windsor, N.S., on Sept. 3.
Police say the province’s medical examiner determined the 40-year-old man was killed and the 73-year-old man killed himself.
They say the two men were members of the same family.
No arrests or charges are anticipated, and the names of the deceased will not be released.
RCMP say they will not be releasing any further details out of respect for the family.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.
François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from its original location because members were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.
The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.
George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”
“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”
Nemaska’s story illustrates the challenges Legault’s government faces as it looks to build new dams to meet the province’s power needs, which are anticipated to double by 2050. Legault has promised that any new projects will be developed in partnership with Indigenous people and have “social acceptability,” but experts say that’s easier said than done.
François Bouffard, an associate professor of electrical engineering at McGill University, said the earlier era of hydro projects were developed without any consideration for the Indigenous inhabitants living nearby.
“We live in a much different world now,” he said. “Any kind of hydro development, no matter where in Quebec, will require true consent and partnership from Indigenous communities.” Those groups likely want to be treated as stakeholders, he added.
Securing wider social acceptability for projects that significantly change the landscape — as hydro dams often do — is also “a big ask,” he said. The government, Bouchard added, will likely focus on boosting capacity in its existing dams, or building installations that run off river flow and don’t require flooding large swaths of land to create reservoirs.
Louis Beaumier, executive director of the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montreal, said Legault’s visit to Nemaska represents a desire for reconciliation with Indigenous people who were traumatized by the way earlier projects were carried about.
Any new projects will need the consent of local First Nations, Beaumier said, adding that its easier to get their blessing for wind power projects compared to dams, because they’re less destructive to the environment and easier around which to structure a partnership agreement.
Beaumier added that he believes it will be nearly impossible to get the public — Indigenous or not — to agree to “the destruction of a river” for a new dam, noting that in recent decades people have come to recognize rivers as the “unique, irreplaceable riches” that they are.
Legault’s visit to northern Quebec came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.
The book, published in 2022 along with Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Nemaska community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, Wapachee said.
In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.
“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”
Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.
Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.
Earlier Sunday, Legault was in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro complex in honour of former premier Bernard Landry. At the event, Legault said he would follow the example of his late predecessor, who oversaw the signing of the historic “Paix des Braves” agreement between the Quebec government and the Cree in 2002.
He said there is “significant potential” in Eeyou Istchee James Bay, both in increasing the capacity of its large dams and in developing wind power projects.
“Obviously, we will do that with the Cree,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEMASKA – For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.
François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from their original location because they were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.
The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.
George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”
“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”
The book, published in 2022 by Wapachee and Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Cree community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, 100 and 300 kilometres away, Wapachee said.
In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.
“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”
Legault’s visit came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.
Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.
Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.
Earlier Sunday, Legault had been in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro dam in honour of former premier Bernard Landry.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
