Highway of Tears Controversy

Though the Highway of Tears looks like any other case that includes a large series of murders, controversy follows suit. What seems to be the early stages of the problem, was really a travesty that has gone for long enough but unfortunately, receives little attention. Between the late sixties and early eighties, almost twenty young women had already gone missing. With women reportedly missing on a highway, you would think a large scale investigation would have happened or at least some media attention, but not quite. The reason for the lack of attention is due to the fact that a majority of the victims have been of Aboriginal descent. A study in Canada from 2009 showed that Aboriginal women aged 25 to 44, are five times more likely to suffer a violent death than other women in Canada. Families of the missing and murdered Aboriginal women have long argued that the media has paid much less attention when missing and murdered women are Aboriginal than when they are Caucasian.

Media responses have ranged from incorporating the criticisms into their coverage to a denial that the problem exists: when serial killer John Martin, who preyed on Aboriginal women in Saskatoon, failed to grab national headlines an editorial in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix argued the race of the victims was not a factor, saying instead that the case received little coverage because the murders occurred in a small town and there was no compelling storyline. However, in his book Just another Indian: A Serial Killer and Canada’s Indifference, journalist Warren Goulding argues that had the victims been White, the story would have drawn national media attention akin to the Paul Bernardo-Karla Homolka case. Other reporters have said that small travel budgets in newsrooms, families who are unwilling to speak to media and a lack of leads or new details that would otherwise keep a story alive, are to blame. The first time papers like The Globe and Mail, the Edmonton Journal and The Vancouver Sun really covered the Highway of Tears was in 2002, when a young “White” women, Nicole Hoar, vanished near the highway. Until that time, the RCMP had never paid enough attention to the issue to even start an investigation.