Highway Of Tears... Only to Some Who Care

By Ben Meisner

While Wilfred Tom an elder from the Soda Creek Band rode his horse into Prince George from the Williams Lake area  to bring attention to the deaths that have occurred on the,  so called , "Highway of Tears"  which is  Highway 16 west of Prince George  he didn’t have the benefit of travelling from Terrace to Prince George on that same day .

Had Tom had the benefit, he would have witnessed between the hours of 10am. and 4pm. one lone aboriginal female, about 20 years old, two young aboriginal women between the ages of 18 and 20 and a young couple, both under the age of 25 hitch hiking east along the highway.

Tom has it right when he suggested that the young people need to be educated about the problems of hitch hiking.

Forty years ago if your ride broke down, or you had no other way to make it to town, out came the thumb and someone picked you up, invariably with good intentions.

Today the predators who travel the roads (not only on highway 16 but every single highway in Canada) view the hitch hikers along those roads as a potential victim. Just as the pedophile sees a gathering of young people as a lunch counter, so does the highway predator.

Now we are told that not enough attention has been paid to the missing women because they are Aboriginal, but keep this in mind, there are few Caucasians using the thumb as a means of travel and the number is dropping, thus, throwing the statistics out of whack.

It is pointless to suggest that those people trying to hitch a ride didn’t know that the "highway of tears" exists; it has been promoted the world over. The problem is, as Elder Tom points out, that the young aboriginal women have not yet learned that this method of travel has some very serious problems associated with it.  Until that message is delivered loud and clear, the problems along  the highway will continue.

I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.

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