British Columbia Highway 16

Let's take a walk and see.

Project E-Pana is a Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or the RCMP, task force created in 2005 with the purpose of solving cases of missing and murdered Indigenous persons along a section of Highway 16.

All the victims were female, between Prince Rupert, British Columbia, and Prince George, British Columbia.

This road came to be known as the Highway of Tears.

The name for the project, E-Pana, was chosen from a combination of E from E Division, which is the RCMP division that has jurisdiction over British Columbia, and Pana, which is the name of an Inuit goddess who cares for souls before heaven or reincarnation.

Though it started with the scope of investigating victims of Highway 16, within a year of its formation, it morphed to include victims along Highways 5, 24, and 97.

First up, we have Gloria Lavena Moody.

Her case is considered unsolved and she's still missing.

This was not the last sighting of Jean, however, and the last person to see her alive was her cousin, Alvin.

After walking out of the house, Jean headed towards Highway 16, which is now known as the notorious Highway of Tears, where dozens of Indigenous women have gone missing or have been murdered.

According to Alvin, the two spent time hanging out on a bridge close to Gitsegukla, talking and enjoying the spectacle of the night sky above them.

As the night wore on, a cool air began to move in over the town, and Alvin decided to hop on his bike to head home and grab a jacket.

It, it's a very important story, and, and maybe we'll get to this in a little more detail later, especially if we're able to bring on an Indigenous guest.

But I l- grew up on Highway 16 in northern British Columbia, which is colloquially known as the Highway of Tears.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

He must follow specific release conditions.

Tamara Lynn Chipman was twenty-one when she disappeared along Highway 16 in northwestern British Columbia in two thousand and five, CBC reports.

Her family is offering a ten-thousand-dollar reward for information.

A BC judge has named a father the guardian after the mother went back to Ukraine with her toddler, The Vancouver Sun reports.

About 70,000 people live here.

And this is also the edge of what people call the Highway of Tears, which is Highway 16.

724 kilometers between here and Prince Rupert on the coast.

And if you go by the RCMP numbers, nine women have gone missing or been murdered along that specific stretch of highway.

They were both 26, born a few weeks apart in the spring of 1963.

They were members of the Chislada Carrier Nation, with roots in the country around Burns Lake, a few hours west along Highway 16.

Like a lot of families from the smaller communities out that way, they'd come to Prince George looking for work.

Prince George in 1989 was a forestry town to its bones, a city of roughly 70,000 people ringed by pulp mills and sawmills sitting where Highway 97 crosses Highway 16.

The economy ran on trees, and short-term camp work that appeared and disappeared with the season was simply a fact of life there.

A job offer from a stranger wasn't any reason for alarm, since that's just how jobs were distributed in the region in the 80s.

At some point, a man he didn't know struck up a conversation, and the conversation turned into a job offer.

The pitch went like this.

Cutting through these rural communities is a highway that for the last few decades has become increasingly notorious.

Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert.

It is 725 kilometers long.

Highway 16 in British Columbia has a much more well-known name.

It's often referred to as the Highway of Tears.

It relates back to the incredible amount of, uh, murdered and missing women and girls, uh, that, uh, that have, uh, simply just disappeared on that highway.

He offers to get her some alcohol, um, which, you know, she's much too young to be drinking.

Um, but she finally says, "Okay, I'll have some m- Mudslides." What is about to happen, I think, is something that's very, very scary.

This was not the last sighting of Jean, however, and the last person to see her live was her cousin, Alvin.

After walking out of the house, Jean headed towards Highway 16, which is now known as the notorious Highway of Tears, where dozens of indigenous women have gone missing or been murdered.

According to Alvin, the two spent time hanging out on a bridge close to Gitsagookla, talking and enjoying the spectacle of the night sky above them.

As the night wore on, a cool air began to move in over the town and Alvin decided to hop on his bike to head home and grab a jacket.