Prince George, B.C. – The issue of violence against the women of Prince George moves out of the shadows and into the public spotlight with the Take Back The Night march in the city’s downtown core.

The 23^rd Take Back The Night is an event to honour the memory of the women who have not survived violence, to celebrate those who have and to demand an end to violence. Ironically the march this year occurs the same week as the sentencing on four counts of first-degree murder of Cody Legebokoff for the horrific murders of three women and a teenage girl.

One of the organizers of the march, Lana Tosoff, says “this year again we’ll be starting at 6pm at City Hall with four or five speakers. They will talk on their own personal history with violence or their professional history and experience. Then we march as a group of women, and it’s usually more on the fun side, it’s a friendly march. And the message is to say that we want to and feel everyone should be able to be safe as women to walk downtown, or anywhere that we want to go.”

The march leaves City Hall for the Civic Centre, then travels along Brunswick to Third Avenue, over to Quebec Street and down 6^th Avenue before returning to City Hall. Tosoff says “it takes about 45 minutes, sometimes an hour if we need to slow down for people in wheelchairs or folks on skooters. And Phoenix Transition house always comes with a vehicle to help if anyone can’t actually walk, some of the elders for instance.”

Who can take part? “All people that identify as women”, says Tosoff, “and children of course, children always come with their parents quite often.” About 150 people marched last year, people “from all over Prince George, from all walks of life.” She says while men don’t actually take part in the march they do assist with it. “Men are helping with the set-up. John Howard Society is providing the snacks, so they are doing their part.”

Anyone, again “identifying as female”, can take part in the march and you are welcome to bring along a sign. But no problem if you don’t have one. “We will have several booths from different agencies set up and one of them will be poster making. And all of the serving organizations that took part have also asked their clients over the past two months to make them up as well. So nice signs, you know “Take Back The Night”, Let’s Put an End to Violence”, things like that.”

While the march is about stressing that anyone should be able to walk down a street at night without feeling anxiety over possible attack or harm, the reality is that in many communities it simply is not safe to do so. Killers and creeps sometimes lurk in the shadows waiting for victims to cross their path. Tosoff agrees that is the case “and so we’re trying to bring attention and awareness to that issue without causing any harm. That is not a safe thing to do at this time. But as a community, this is a community issue for all of us. We must be more than a bystander and start talking about these things. It happens to all of us in all walks of life, it isn’t a poverty thing, it isn’t a race thing.”

Tosoff also stresses that while we may read or hear about statistics showing, for instance, that cases of violence are going down, those are only the cases we hear about. “We always have to remember that those are reported stats. So the rest of us are going, “do we live in the same town?” She says there are many more unreported incidents than reported. “It’s always been that way.”