Too Close to Home

An online newspaper has hired the two women in this photo to cover the Robert Pickton trial in Vancouver. Pickton is accused of murdering at least two dozen prostitutes or sex trade workers, as they are now described. Pauline VanKoll and Trisha Baptie were chosen from a number of candidates who had once worked the Red Light district of Vancouver themselves. They knew some of the victims, women whose lives were considered so inconsequential by our society that no serious investigation took place until the disappearances were too numerous to ignore. Natives and drug addicts who work the streets tend to be considered a nuisance rather than citizens deserving protection. Pauline and Trisha will offer their reflections as women who escaped this grisly fate.

Sometimes these stories are so far from our day-to-day reality that we can't be stirred to pay attention. I am listening, in part because one of these writers, Pauline VanKoll, is my cousin. She was adopted by my aunt and uncle who lived on the west coast. I didn't see Pauline often but I remember her sweet, round face as a child ten years my junior. Her native background was a curiosity, but not a topic of much discussion in our family until word traveled east that she was struggling with her identity in the very white world of her adoptive parents and siblings. By her mid-teens she was dealing with her own demons of addiction and had entered the sex trade.

I was glad to see Pauline at my uncle's funeral a year and a half ago, even though it was a sad occasion which brought about our reunion. We chatted at the dinner table and I heard that she had been "clean" for several years, remarried, and rebuilding her life. She was interviewed recently on Newsworld where she offered an articulate outlook on the life she once lived and the possibilities for life now. I thank God for her new beginning.