Hi. My name is Lorna Martin.
I'm here to share my mother's story. Her name is Marie Jean Saint Saveur, and she's a member of the Bigstone Cree Nation in Wabasca-Desmarais, Alberta. I'm also a member of the Bigstone Cree.
My mother went missing in 1987. It's been 26 years. We just spent three days with the Native Women's Association of Canada in a family gathering. This work is exhausting and I'm exhausted today, but I'm honoured, and I will always step up to the plate to share my mom's story. All our family lives in Alberta, in Edmonton. I have a sister in Lillooet, B.C. I usually get to share her story, because I have the biggest mouth sometimes. Sometimes there's one family member who, for whatever reason, can articulate things on behalf of the family.
My mother attended the St. Martin Residential School on Bigstone Cree Nation. She had her Cree language. My big sister Sharon was here on the weekend, sharing some more stories about our mother, because Sharon and my mom were really close in different ways. Sharon is my half-sister, but we grew up together in the same home, and Sharon's first language was Cree, so my mom could speak with her. I think when our people speak the language it always connects them more closely.
Sharon just mentioned something about the women in my mom's side of the family, which really explains how I remember my aunts. They're considered to be good medicine women, healers, and also when they walk into a room, they bring light, positive, good feelings, and good, happy energy that radiates in the room. Growing up, I always had that energy where I could....
Maybe my mom was on her way to the Edmonton mental health hospital after almost taking her life the night before. I heard some of the nightmare stories of her and her siblings being in residential school. She had a daily struggle with her life, because of those nightmares that were inflicted on them by the nuns and the priests and the people who worked at those schools. Her brother was blinded in one eye at the age of eight from being punched down the stairway by a nun at the school, and her sister also mentioned that they were locked in closets, because they maybe didn't want to go to bed, or, you know, they were just being little kids. Those are the things that my mom had to.... She drank because those memories are challenging for people to deal with on a daily basis.
At the time of her disappearance, she'd had a life of alcohol abuse. When she was reported missing, the RCMP came to take a report from my sister Arlene from Edmonton and poor Arlene mentioned the date and time she last saw our mother. One of the first questions the RCMP asked my sister was if she drank. Arlene couldn't deny it. She didn't lie. She said yes. He said, “They go on a drinking binge for two or three days and then they come back”. My sister's fiancé at the time—he's not a native, he's Tom Pearson from Athabasca—asked what that meant, what that had to do with Mary being missing.
Tom is not my brother. Tom was my sister's fiancé. So that was the response from the RCMP, in asking for help in finding our mom, we met up with that type of racial weirdness from them. When you're full of anxiety, you're hurting, it feels like a kick in the stomach or in the head when somebody you're asking for help says something like that. Right away, any chance of trust, any line of communication is.... There's a barrier right there. You might as well put your hand up. There's no help there. They said our mom was a drunken Indian.
We didn't know what to do. That was in 1987 and the Native Women's Association of Canada wasn't there. They were there but missing and murdered women weren't being talked about. There were no resources. No one knew how to help. I had just moved to Ontario that year. I followed my husband and was pregnant with our second child. Over that year, I couldn't really help. My second son was born with congenital heart failure, so he had open-heart surgery at two weeks of age. I had to attend to his delicate, precious little life. He's a healthy young man now.
The RCMP poster about missing persons and unidentified remains still has misinformation. Some of that information excludes things like her birthdate, stuff like that. There is some non-factual information because some of that information came from her common-law husband, her boyfriend at the time. We believe, and the RCMP told my sister they believe, he murdered her because he burned her clothes. This man told the police that he burned my mom's clothes and that he also cashed her last paycheque.
He was there at some investigation by the RCMP. They found out that he had been violent towards some of his ex-women, like his ex-wife. He pistol-whipped her. The last woman he was living with in B.C., where he fled to after my mother...he told the RCMP that the last time he saw her she had jumped in a truck with some truckers and was heading to B.C. So he had his children, they were adults and they were living in B.C. The last woman he lived with in B.C. after my mom, she disclosed to the RCMP that she was very scared of him as well. He broke down her door, busted it down, after being told not to come back, to leave the house. So they had evidence on him. Actually, he died in a car accident, a head-on collision, right around the time they started doing more of an investigation on him.
Right away they should have gone on him full force when he said that he burned his clothes. I heard another family mention that the person burned the person's clothes. I don't know what that means, but I'm sure a criminal homicide investigation unit would know what that means.
I know as well that it takes a lot of money to...when people go missing, when people are murdered. I know, because my husband was murdered in 1998, and we had three young boys at the time, so I know what that is. And the murderer as well, we all know who it was; he was the family of Ted Rogers, Ted Rogers of Rogers Communications.... It was his nephew. So we know how much money that family has, and I'm pretty sure that's why he got off and he's walking free. Bringing that up again is the hard thing, because one of my sons was also abused by that same person who murdered his father.
Speaking for myself, the family, you know...the person is murdered...for the family, it takes away a lot of their life force, and the physical pain, to be under that type of duress and stress, works against your immune system. I know that. I am fortunate to have very well-educated people in the family on my husband's side to help me, even when my mother went missing. I have a sister-in-law who has a Ph.D. and a brother-in-law who was very well educated and knowledgeable about the law, and his contacts, and their energy, and the things they knew...what to do to help me when my mom was missing.
But still.... They would always ask about her, like, “What happened to your mom?”, and who was helping me...I don't know. There was no one helping me find her. She was one of the first women registered with the Native Women's Association of Canada. From that point on, that was the place where I could talk about my mom after all those years. That was started in 2005, and all of a sudden these people wanted to hear about my mom. That was a new and welcome thing.
For years I wasn't able to share my mom's story on Parliament Hill or even go around all those women at the vigils. It was really scary for me. I didn't know what to say. I was scared to share my loss and all the different feelings, the anger. But over time I listened to them. I got educated about the things I could do and shared that with my family out west.
So I became very organized with my information. It made me feel good and stronger. There's strength in numbers. I feel stronger when I'm around other family members. You get your information organized and polished, and you have the spiritual energy of your loved ones.
My mom frequently comes to me in dreams. That's good; they're very loving dreams.
I miss her so much.
That's all I can say now.
Meegwetch. Hai hai. Thank you.