When I was interning at the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix way back in 1999, I pitched a story about local people travelling to the Battle in Seattle to protest the World Trade Organization meetings going on there. I was told by the editor that it was not a story...until the protests absolutely blew up in the media a couple days later and suddenly he was interested. Whatever sells papers, don't you know. (I wrote about this in the December 2008 Astro Perspective...)
At the same time as this was going on, there was a long-time female reporter at the paper who pitched an investigative story about the masses of women going missing in cities across Western Canada. She was also denied by the editor.
(That editor wasn't a bad guy, either. Just wrapped up in the stodgy, limited mindset so much of the media seems to require from its members.)
A little over two years later, in 2002, a huge story hit the media. The remains of 27 missing women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside were found on Robert Pickton's Port Coquitlam, British Columbia pig farm.
This case was just the tip of the iceberg, of course.
Sparked by the murders of two young aboriginal women this summer, the Manitoba government, the RCMP and the Winnipeg Police Service have finally formed a task force to look into the mass disappearances and murders of women (mostly aboriginal) in the province. Seventy-five disappearances in the last two decades. (Actually, 75 was the number initially reported, but it is now closer to 150 as family members have come forward.)
Again, because many of these women were working as prostitutes at the times of their murders/disappearances, had drug and alcohol problems and/or were interacting with unsavoury people, it all flew under the societal radar.
But here's Black Moon Lilith, along with Pluto, finally driving this to the surface in our police and governmental institutions...
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