They’re calling for the 14-acre property to be made into a public cemetery with a memorial wall and gardens in honor of the 69 missing and murdered women from Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside neighborhood.
The Province of British Columbia has had a $10 million lien on the farm since August 2003, about a year after legal proceedings against Pickton began in 2002. The women’s supporters, however, are dismayed that the property could be sold. They say the Pickton farm is a cemetery and should be viewed as such and treated with dignity.
“To sell that property for development is irresponsible. How could we as a society contemplate erasing what happened there?” says Tom Crean, founder and director the Partners in Care Alliance, a non-profit organization that runs a fund for the missing women.
“There are 500 women listed as missing today in western Canada alone. There needs to be a permanent memorial and not just to the 69 women that are missing on the Downtown Eastside. We need a memorial to all of those women—There needs to be acknowledgement,” says Crean.
About two dozen people rallied at the Pickton farm recently in solidarity with the missing women’s families and friends who undertook a 70-hour vigil in recognition of the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Nov. 25.
The proposed memorial would have a “wall of remembrance” inscribed with the names of the murdered and missing women, many of whom are aboriginal.
A pig farmer, Pickton was arrested after police discovered human remains in one of the farm’s slaughterhouses. After killing his victims, Pickton dismembered and gutted them, feeding the remains to his pigs.
In an unprecedented investigation, the entire farm was declared a crime scene—the largest in Canadian history. Over 150 investigators and forensics and archeology experts were part of a 21-month search, including 102 anthropology students who painstakingly sifted through every inch of soil.
After an 11-month trial, Pickton was convicted last December of six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. He still faces murder charges in the deaths on 20 women, most of whom were prostitutes from the Downtown Eastside.
The farm, located in Port Coquitlam, about 40 kilometers east of Vancouver, is currently owned by Pickton and two of his siblings.
