When I was going to university at Simon Fraser, just outside Vancouver I was also going out with a guy who lived at home with his parents.  They were in Coquitlam, an upper middle class white suburb of large homes perched on the side of a big hill.  I’d go to his house after our long day at school and we’d hang out, watch some TV, drink some beers, you know, live the student life. 

One night at 2:00 a.m. I was driving home from his place and the neighbourhood was dead quiet.  I drove down the back of the hill toward the Fraser River. A women was standing in the middle of the road waving me down.  I stopped and she promptly got into the passenger seat of my seat without saying anything and waved ahead like she wanted me to drive. 

She was agitated.  She was nicely dressed. She was a native woman and I couldn’t figure out what she was doing in the middle of the street in this neighbourhood in the middle of the night.

She was also very drunk so when I asked her where she lived she pointed but her words were slurred so I couldn’t understand them.  I said, “it’s ahead here?”.  And she nodded so I drove.  I headed into the city because that seemed to be where she was pointing.  Not long in the warm car she fell asleep. 

I couldn’t figure out what to do.  I’d shake her awake to ask if we were getting closer and she’d nod and point or slur a few words and then go back to sawing  logs in my passenger seat.  After a while she was sleeping too deeply to wake her up at all.  So I drove for a while longer and got to the South Granville area which is  a safe ‘Restoration Hardware’ and trendy health food store kind of shopping neighbourhood.  

I was frustrated.  I didn’t want to go right downtown Vancouver because that might have meant letting her out in a more questionable neighbourhood.  So I stopped at a bus stop, shook her awake, opened her door and said, ‘I’m sorry, this is as far as I can go, I don’t know where you live but I hope you get home ok’.  She looked at me and grunted and got out.

I drove home fighting with myself.  Should I have done something different?  Could I have somehow found out where she lived?  Was there somewhere else I could have dropped her?  Did I do enough?  Why didn’t I ask her name?  How did something so weird just happen?

A long time later I heard that a man named Robert Pickton, a pig farmer near the Fraser River in Coquitlam was being charged with multiple murders of women.  He would go to the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood in a van and pick up groups of women, inviting them to party at his house.  They were often addicts, sometimes native and usually sextrade workers.

They found remains and DNA of missing women all over his farm.  I turned off the news whenever they got into details of what he did to them because it made me sick.  It’s said that he bragged about killing 50 women.  His farm was down the hill from where I picked up my passenger that night long ago when I was in school.  I’ve thought about it a lot.  I know that night years ago,  she was at that farm.

I wonder what she saw that night.  She was too healthy to be a hardcore addict and not dressed like a sextrade worker.  Is that why she got away?  Did she leave friends behind that night?  Did she see them again?  Whatever she encountered it made her hightail it out of there, walk a long way up a steep hill and wave me down for a ride.  No wonder she was agitated, she must have been terrified someone was going to come after her.

I did some Women Studies courses at the time and also worked at the student newspaper at SFU.  I’d heard about women disappearing from the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood.  People were angry that  the cops didn’t seem to care about yet another sextrade worker and addict disappearing from a rough neighbourhood.  

The Downtown Eastside lifestyle isn’t known for helping one’s longevity, I get that, but their attitude seemed to be that these victims were second class citizens not worthy of their attention.  Most of the women were  far from home and out of touch with their families, their friends were other addicts, they had no one to fight for them.

Pickton only got charged with 6 counts of second degree murder.  The prosecutors had proof of another 20 but the 6 were enough to lock him away for the rest of his miserable life.   He must spend his time in jail alone, he wouldn’t survive long in general population.

Yesterday the Vancouver police issued an unqualified apology to the families of the women who were murdered by him.  The deputy chief said, “We’re sorry from the bottom of our hearts that we did not catch him sooner and protect more women from being harmed.”  He said they should have done better so that more lives could have been saved.

When I think about the passenger in my car that dark night a long time ago, I’m so grateful she got away.   I still wish I could have gotten her home.  I hope she’s having a good life with people who care about her, wherever she is.