There will be a lot of images coming out of the next two weeks and I wanted to share a few that I see almost everyday in my neighbourhood.

They really make me stop and think.

I’m not sure which group or artist or non-profit to attribute the posters to or what they were made to represent in the first place.

But I find it bone-chilling because every time I see them I think of the missing women, largely aboriginal whose lives ended on “The Highway of Tears”.

In Metro Vancouver 45% of homeless women are aboriginal. According to an article in Megaphone, Vancouver’s Street paper, the Vancouver Police Department still lists 39 women as missing from the area.

The last thing I want is to make you or anyone feel bad.  I’m just looking to keep their stories in our minds. In a way it’s weird for me to write about it as a very privileged white woman living a few blocks away from  a Pottery Barn and designer chocolate shop.

But in another way, it’s not weird at all, actually it’s weird not to write about it. Not to notice it happening, not to make visible the invisible injustices… like the fact I’m very much alive in my bright pink coat next to black and white faceless posters that may represent people no longer with us, some of whom we as a society failed to notice were gone.

The posters are on trash bins which is like a swift rush of cold air flying through a stale room.  Just who (not what) are we discarding with our current policies?

I wrote to my MLA and MP about arts cuts, library freezes, student loans, water fountains and homelessness. My next letter is about an independent inquiry into the cases of these missing women.

You can sign a petition here.

And on Valentine’s Day,  starting on the corner of Main and Hastings, there will be a memorial march at noon.  Which gives everyone plenty of time to take in the Chinese New Year parade just a few blocks over beginning at 9:30am.

Witnessing the march just may be the most loving and thoughtful thing I have ever done on Valentine’s day.