Gladys Radek

A B.C. woman campaigns for justice in the shadow of the missing and murdered

When Gladys Radek speaks of her beloved niece, Tamara Chipman, who disappeared in 2005 along Highway 16 in northern British Columbia, emotion rises with every syllable. “She was last seen hitchhiking out of Prince Rupert. The shocking reality of a family member missing—it took its toll on me immediately.” But the shock jolted her into action, and a few months later, still with no word on Tamara’s whereabouts, she travelled from her home in Vancouver to Prince Rupert to join a walk being held for women missing or murdered near Highway 16—the infamously dubbed Highway of Tears.

“That was the first time I’d heard it called the Highway of Tears,” says Radek, about the 720-kilometre stretch of road between Prince George and Prince Rupert, where a rugged and often isolated landscape makes hiding crime easy. Over the past 40 years, say advocates for the cause, more than 30 women, mostly Aboriginal, have gone missing or been found murdered near the highway. Tamara is among them.

For Radek, that walk launched a voracious activism not only for Aboriginal women, but also for all women in Canada whose voices have been silenced by violence. As co-founder of Walk4Justice, a campaign to raise awareness and seek justice for victimized women, Radek has organized three walks to date, the first an ambitious 4,000-kilometre event from Vancouver to Ottawa during the summer of 2008. On June 21, National Aboriginal Day, Radek set out with a caravan of volunteers, walking in 10-kilometre relays, to take a message to Parliament Hill.

What message, exactly? Pay attention when a woman goes missing, says Radek. Investigate all disappearances and murders equally, including those of sex workers. Have a national symposium as well as a public inquiry into how and why women go missing, and how the justice system responds when they do. “It was hard,” she says of that first walk. “We hit every thunderstorm. But we were shaking the ground as we were walking. Our voices were being heard.”

Another walk is scheduled for 2011. And walking isn’t easy for Radek, who lost a leg in a hit-and-run accident and uses a prosthetic. “I get blisters, but I say the pain in my leg is nothing compared to the pain in people’s hearts for their loved ones.” Between walks, Radek organizes vigils, advocates in communities and updates a Walk4Justice databank of missing women. Yet in the end, she says, it’s always about the families. “A lot of these women have children. And I want an answer for them.

-Deborah Sanborn