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Daughter of First Nations woman missing 20 years remembers her mother's 'warm hands'
Daughter of First Nations woman missing 20 years remembers her mother's 'warm hands'

CBC

timea day ago

  • General
  • CBC

Daughter of First Nations woman missing 20 years remembers her mother's 'warm hands'

Stephanie Cameron-Johnson was 11 and in foster care when she learned her mother had gone missing on Vancouver Island, after a friend showed her a photo in a newspaper. What followed would be two decades of challenging racial stereotypes surrounding her mom, undoing shame, and repairing identity disconnection caused by the child welfare system, Cameron-Johnson says. "The narrative that's been spoken about missing, murdered Indigenous women and two-spirit folks… I really feel like it's my responsibility to change that," said Cameron-Johnson. Her mother Belinda Cameron, a Sixties Scoop survivor from Peguis First Nation in Manitoba, was 42 when she was last seen at a Shoppers Drug Mart in Esquimalt, B.C., on Esquimalt Rd near Head St., on May 11, 2005. She suffered from a mental illness and was prescribed medication, to be picked up at Shoppers daily, but failed to attend the pharmacy in the days following. She wasn't reported missing until June 4. Police consider disappearance suspicious Det. Colin Hanninen of the Victoria Police Department said Cameron was a person of routine and a fixture in Esquimalt in 2005. She was considered a vulnerable person by police due to addiction and mental health issues, said Hanninen, and her disappearance is considered suspicious. Cameron was initially reported missing by a man who she'd been involved with, but the man told Victoria Police he had not seen her in over a month. Police used a polygraph test to question if the man had harmed Cameron; he denied doing so and passed the test. "At the time there was a robust investigation involving this person, and a polygraph was part of that," said Hanninen. Investigators conducted over 100 interviews and an extensive forensic examination of Cameron's Cairn Road apartment near Old Esquimalt Road, said Hanninen, as well as canine and helicopter searches. "Unfortunately, you know, it had been potentially three to four weeks from the time we can confirm she was last seen to her being reported, which puts you at a disadvantage," said Hanninen. "In 2005, it would have been a lot more challenging than it would be today to find clues of where she could have gone or, you know, if she was with anybody." A 2010 report from the Native Women's Association of Canada said British Columbia had the highest number of cases of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in the country, according to its database. B.C. also had the highest percentage of suspicious death cases: nine per cent of the cases in its database from B.C. fell under the category of suspicious deaths, compared to four per cent nationally, the report said. 'Ripple effect' Cameron-Johnson said police and media reports her mother used drugs or may be doing sex work don't fit with the way she remembers her mother. "It's a stereotype… that's not all who she was," said Cameron-Johnson. "I remember speaking to some social workers, and they said that she was just always so sweet and kind but that could also kind of get taken advantage of." Cameron-Johnson and her younger sister Zoe were living in foster care at the time of their mother's disappearance. Social workers told the sisters their mother voluntarily put them into care, said Cameron-Johnson, but she remembers being abruptly removed by ministry workers from her Grade 1 classroom in 1999. 'When she went missing, my foster mom told me that it was essentially, like, her fault," Cameron-Johnson said. "They really did make her look like she was in the wrong." She and her sister being put in care was the beginning of her mother's downward spiral, Cameron-Johnson said. "I feel like that really kind of did have that ripple effect on my mom's self worth, and going missing," said Cameron-Johnson. "I don't think she was surrounded with care and love and support. I feel that someone did, like, harm her in a terrible way, and I think that people knew her... know things." Kirsten Barnes, director of clinical legal services at the B.C. First Nations Justice Council, said women like Cameron faced less access to legal recourse and understanding around systemic barriers in the '90s and early 2000s than today, with improvements still needed. "Indigenous women, a lot of them would have felt incredibly alone. They would have felt incredible power imbalance… she probably felt a great deal of pressure," said Barnes. Federal and provincial sanctioned policies such as residential schools and the Sixties Scoop were "created deliberately to destroy the family unit," said Barnes, and have led to the ongoing overrepresentation of Indigenous children in care, known as the Millennial Scoop. As of January 2024, 68 per cent of the 4,835 children and youth in care in B.C. were Indigenous, according to the province. "In this case with Belinda, had she had those [family] connections her whole entire life, things may have been different, right? She may have had all of the support that she would have needed," Barnes said. "No parent wants to ever voluntarily give their children up… and that may not have happened if she had not been taken as a child herself. It wasn't really voluntary if you think about the circumstances that she was probably dealing with at the time." Cameron-Johnson said she and her sister are still looking for answers on what happened to their mother, and can feel their mom guiding them. Belinda Cameron was a mother, a homemaker, a baker, enjoyed beading group nights at the Victoria Friendship Centre, and was a skilled thrifter with incredible style, said Cameron-Johnson. "I just remember her warm hands. She just had a really lovely, warm presence," Cameron-Johnson said. "She was there. She was present. I can't really ask more for that, as a parent, to have in your life." Belinda Cameron is described as a five feet, eight inches tall with a medium to large build, long, dark brown hair at the time of her disappearance, and dark brown eyes. She is also known as Belinda Ann Engen.

Tick-borne disease is spreading into new parts of Canada. Here's where you're at risk
Tick-borne disease is spreading into new parts of Canada. Here's where you're at risk

CTV News

time2 days ago

  • General
  • CTV News

Tick-borne disease is spreading into new parts of Canada. Here's where you're at risk

Here's everything you need to know about ticks, including ways to protect both you and your pets. Here's everything you need to know about ticks, including ways to protect both you and your pets. Should you be worried about ticks this spring? As the weather gets warmer, public health experts are warning about the risk of tick-borne illnesses like lyme disease -- a problem that's spreading to new parts of the country. The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) has identified thousands of postal codes across more than 1,100 municipalities it considers 'risk areas' for exposure to lyme. As of the current list, high-risk areas are concentrated in communities along the U.S. border, as well as in major population centres. In Western Canada, risk areas are concentrated on Vancouver Island, the coastal areas of B.C.'s Lower Mainland and river valleys across that province's south, as well as nearly all of Manitoba from the north shore of Lake Winnipeg to the U.S. border. Further east, much of southern Ontario's Great Lakes coasts, including the entirety of the Greater Toronto Area, are within areas considered high risk by the agency. A corridor of risk areas also exists along the St. Lawrence River from Lake Ontario to the Atlantic coast, including Kingston, Ont., Ottawa and Montreal. And in Atlantic Canada, nearly all of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, including Cape Breton Island, are known to be habitats for blacklegged ticks. Blacklegged tick This undated photo provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows a blacklegged tick, which is also known as a deer tick. (CDC via AP, File) Virginie Millien is an associate professor of biology at McGill University who studies the effects of climate change on wildlife such as ticks and their hosts. 'Risk areas are growing,' Millien told by phone. 'It's not going to stop anytime soon because it's really driven by climate warming.' Millien has been tracking the emergence of Lyme disease in Quebec for over a decade 'The risk is present for people, not just whenever they go far in the woods in remote areas,' Millien cautioned. 'It's also present in some major cities now because there's large urban parks in these cities.' iFrames are not supported on this page. Informed by data from provincial and territorial authorities, risk areas are identified by the emergence of new tick populations, as well as human populations 'most at risk of lyme disease.' But PHAC is quick to note that even if you are not located in a high-risk postal code, it's important to remain vigilant. '[Ticks] can also spread by travelling on birds and deer. You can sometimes find blacklegged ticks in areas outside of where they're known to live,' the agency's lyme-disease monitoring page reads. 'Always take precautions against tick bites when you're in wooded or grassy areas.' Ticking upward PHAC notes that as climate change has increased temperatures across the country, the viable range for lyme-infected ticks has grown, increasing risks of exposure. 'Incidence continues to remain high due to factors such as greater human exposure to risk areas and to risk of infection,' reads a 2022 report on lyme-disease monitoring. Millien says ticks can be spread by other animals like mice, which are also expanding their range due to climate change. 'The tick needs to be able to survive the winter to become established in a region,' Millien explained. 'Winter conditions are going to determine whether the tick is going survive or not, and of course it's getting warmer, so they can survive each year in more northern localities.' 'It's going to get bigger and bigger' Lyme disease is a life-altering infection caused by the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, which can spread to humans via tick bites. There are more than 40 varieties of ticks in Canada, and many are known to carry lyme. The species that are of the biggest concern are the blacklegged tick in Eastern Canada and the western blacklegged tick in B.C. While early signs of the disease can be fairly mild, including fever, fatigue, swollen lymph nodes and a bullseye-shaped rash near the location of the bite, later stages can cause severe headaches, arthritis, spreading pain throughout the muscles, bones and joints, difficulties with thinking and memory and facial paralysis, among other symptoms. First tracked nationally in 2009, reported cases of lyme disease have risen greatly in the past quarter-century, to more than 5,000 in last year's preliminary data from just a few hundred per year in the early 2010s. 'In Canada, there were only a handful of cases only a decade ago,' Millien said. 'It's not a linear relationship, it's exponential when a disease emerges. So it's going to get bigger and bigger, and in an exponential way. That's the expectation.' PHAC notes that cases are often underreported because they go undetected, possibly even to those infected with the disease. Case counts can vary annually due to underlying weather, trends in outdoor activity among humans and prevention efforts by public health authorities, they say. Anyone who develops symptoms after a tick bite, or does after visiting a high-risk area for tick-borne lyme, is advised to contact their heath-care provider. Treatment with antibiotics is most effective soon after exposure, posing the best chance of recovery, though symptoms may persist after treatment is complete, PHAC says. How to remove a tick George Chaconas is a professor at the University of Calgary's Cumming School of Medicine who studies the bacteria that causes lyme disease. 'If you're in an area known to have ticks, protect yourself,' he told by phone. 'Wear light-coloured clothing, so if you pick up a tick, you can see it. Tuck your pants into your socks. You may look a little bit funny, but if you do that, if a tick gets on your foot and crawls upwards, which is what they do, it's not going to get under your pants and crawl up to your groin or somewhere else.' Tick Twister Removing a tick with ether and a tick removal device. (Photo By BSIP / Universal Images Group via Getty Images) Insect repellants can also help. If bitten, Chaconas says it's important to quickly but carefully remove a tick by the head without squeezing its body. You can then upload a picture of a tick to to have it identified. 'If it's been less than 24 hours, then chances of picking up Lyme disease are very low because Lyme is usually not transmitted until 24 to 48 hours after the tick bite,' he added. 'If it's been on for longer than that, you can also usually tell by what the tick looks like. If it's big and fat and full of blood, then it's been there for a while.' Related:

Highlights: FC Dallas 0-0 Philadelphia Union (MLS)
Highlights: FC Dallas 0-0 Philadelphia Union (MLS)

Yahoo

time2 days ago

  • General
  • Yahoo

Highlights: FC Dallas 0-0 Philadelphia Union (MLS)

City of Vancouver pausing plans to dissolve elected park board: memo A memo posted to social media indicates that the provincial government did not pass the needed legislative changes to allow the City of Vancouver to dissolve its elected park board, a controversial initiative attempted by Mayor Ken Sim. Park Board Chair Laura Christensen says the elected body continues to work on improving the city's parks amid the uncertainty. 6:20 Now Playing Paused Ad Playing

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