Time hasn’t made it any easier for Thelma Favel to deal with the murder of her young grand-niece, Tina Fontaine.
Now a decade later, Favel held a memorial walk in Tina’s honour on Aug. 17 and said she is finally letting her go.
“I held onto her for 10 long, agonizing years,” Favel told a crowd gathered at Tina’s gravesite on the weekend, “because when she died, a part of me died also.
“Now, she wants me to let go, let her be at peace and for me to go on with my life.”
Favel was Tina’s guardian for many years before she was put back under Child and Family Services (CFS) care and placed in a hotel in downtown Winnipeg.
Tina went missing soon after – her body was found more than a week later in the Red River near the city’s downtown on Aug. 17, 2014.
“You now live in our hearts and our memories, and no one can ever take that away,” said a tearful Favel as part of a memorial walk on Sagkeeng Anicinabe Nation, 120 kilometers northeast of Winnipeg, Saturday.
Several dozen people attended the event in Tina’s home community where she was laid to rest beside her father, who was murdered in 2011.
Drums, singing and crying could be heard as the crowd walked to a monument for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and 2SLGBTQI+ people (MMIWG2S+) erected in the community in 2019.
“I was part of the walk 10 years ago when we did it in Winnipeg,” said supporter Kelly Gossfeld. “That’s just starting to come in and I feel really overwhelmed with emotion right now.”
Tina was a vulnerable 15-year-old navigating the streets of Winnipeg before her murder. She had been in and out of CFS care multiple times since she was one year old.
Advocates have said the child welfare system failed her.
Sherry Gott, Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth, said changes still need to be made a decade later.
“… There is hope with the new [federal] child welfare legislation,“ Gott said at the memorial walk. “I think it gives the communities a say of where their children go, which is a good thing, right? They don’t end up on the streets like the way Tina was exploited.”
No one was convicted in Tina’s murder. The man charged in her death was acquitted and died earlier this year.
However, her slaying helped spark the federal government’s National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls that ran from 2017 to 2019.
The inquiry released 231 calls for justice, but former Sagkeeng band councillor and Favel family friend Marilyn Courchene said they have gone unanswered.
“We need to stop these people that are taking our girls off the street and taking them for whatever,” said Courchene, who has also lost a female relative to violence. “Whether it’s sex trafficking, whether it’s for selling them, we have to stop that. That’s our responsibility that we take today.”
Manitoba Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine said Sagkeeng has the highest number of MMIWG2S+ in the country.
She believes it is what happened to Tina and the experiences of MMIWG2S+ families that wider society is even aware of the ongoing crisis.
“I always say that all of the work that MMIWG2S+ families did over the last 30, 40 years – it was a slow but very consistent process of planting seeds in the public consciousness,” she said. “Tina Fontaine’s murder is what unleashed and allowed that to flourish.”
The impact of Tina’s life and legacy is clear to Favel, who hopes no one else has to feel the same pain she does in the future.
“Tina started an earthquake when her body was found 10 years ago today,” said Favel. “It was so devastating to hear that she was gone.
“I was holding on to her; I was keeping her alive in my heart and in my mind. But, today, I’m saying good-bye.”
