Fastened to frosty winter jackets, their beautiful, smiling faces dangled.
The tiny lapel pins, bearing photos of Raylene Grant and Natasha Moar, conveyed an innocence lost – and a resolve among those left to mourn.
The pins were standard attire at the Take Back the Night march, held Wednesday to draw attention to Grant, Moar and the scourge of violence that claimed their lives and those of so many other women.
“Flin Flon has seen violence against women in many forms and unfortunately many times,” organizer Colleen Arnold told the marchers.
Arnold referred to Grant, who was violently murdered in Flin Flon in 2011, and Moar, a former Flin Flonner beaten to death in Crane River, Manitoba, in 2009.
“These are the women that we know of. We march to say, ‘Enough!’” said Arnold, speaking through a megaphone.
Bev Jackson, Grant’s aunt, gave marchers a sense of the toll the murder took on her family.
“It has been four years now since the tragedy of losing our beloved Raylene to senseless violence,” Jackson told the marchers. “It took three years, three months and 12 days to finally get a verdict and sentence. They call this justice, but for any of us who have had to live day in and day out of losing someone close to our hearts, there will never be justice.”
More than 30 people, ranging from children to those of retirement age, took part in the march amid some of the coldest temperatures this winter.
Trailing a slow-moving RCMP cruiser, they chanted slogans as they marched down Main Street before looping onto Hapnot Street.
Many marchers carried large photos of Grant and Moar.
The march was part of the Women’s Resource Centre’s events marking Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
Take Back the Night, a movement with marches held across the globe, was sparked by the death of Susan Speeth, a Philadelphia woman who was attacked by a stranger as she walked back from work at night.
