One year later, headstone placed on Tina Fontaine’s grave

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This article was published 17/08/2015 (3940 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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SAGKEENG FIRST NATION — Tina Fontaine will share a permanent memorial with her father on a headstone unveiled near her childhood home Monday.

The headstone was a gift from Eden Memorials, stone carvers with a long history of working on Manitoba monuments, and Eternal Grace Funerals.

Tina is the 15-year-old Sagkeeng teen whose slaying put a spotlight on Manitoba Child and Family Services and stoked support for a national inquiry into murdered and missing indigenous women.

Monday marked one year after her body was pulled from the Red River in Winnipeg.

Police continue to investigate Tina’s death and there have been no arrests.

The service at the First Nation’s Roman Catholic St. Alexander Parish Church saw family and friends gathered to unveil the headstone carved in the shape of a heart.

Tina’s great aunt, Thelma Favel, who raised the girl, fought for her composure during the short service at the gravesite.

“For me, I’m finally going to say goodbye to her today. She was my happy girl. It’s closure,” Favel said. “I had some closure today. I got what I wanted for her today and that’s all.”

“It’s to finalize (things),” said Nouella Fontaine, Tina’s grandmother and Favel’s sister. “I’m feeling everything my sister’s feeling and I’m trying to be strong for her.”

The stone tells the story Tina’s friends and family want to remember about her 15 short years. It was what Favel said she wanted for her grandniece.

Tina’s name and family relationships — the stone names her a beloved daughter, granddaughter, sister, cousin and friend — prominently cover the heart from top to bottom. The last few lines identity the stone as a double marker for Tina’s father, Eugene Fontaine, the victim of a fatal beating outside a shed on this First Nation 100 kilometres north of Winnipeg. The image of clasped hands, representing the close father-daughter bond ripped apart with his death, sits at the root of the granite stone with photos of them both etched in stone.

It was the severing of that bond that sent Tina spiralling into the depths of grief, uprooted the teen’s stable home life and eventually led to the sequence of tragic events before her own brutal death.

Nick Kynsh, a director with Eternal Grace, said the monument is a symbol for the family but one that also holds meaning for every family.

“Tina was a life who lived. That could have been my daughter or any of our daughters,” Kynsh said. He recounted the calls and visits to family to arrange the monument, down to the last letter carved in the stone.

Among the 60-plus mourners was Bernadette Smith, founder of Drag the Red, a community advocacy organization that began mounting searches of the Red River because of the way Tina’s remains were discovered.

Police divers found Tina’s body wrapped in plastic when they were searching for Faron Hall, the city’s homeless hero who saved two people from drowning in the Red before eventually drowning in the river himself at a later date. A statue in commemoration of Hall is planned for The Forks near the Esplanade Riel Bridge.

“It had to take her to die to open up everyone’s eyes,” Favel said.

Nahanni Fontaine, Manitoba’s adviser on missing and murdered indigenous women, stood beside Smith at the gravesite. “It’s my community, too,” said Fontaine, who has devoted years to supporting the relatives of the missing and murdered.

Kyle Kematch stood holding tobacco in his hand to offer with a silent traditional prayer. He knows the grief of loss firsthand: his sister, Amber Guiboche, and his cousin, Sylvia Guiboche, are both among the missing. He said he drove out from Winnipeg as a gesture of caring to Tina’s family. “It’s just to show the support,” he said, excusing himself to make his offering.

In the weeks that followed that grisly discovery, it was revealed that police, paramedics and a child welfare worker had all been in contact with Tina on the final days she was last seen alive but authorities did not take her into care despite the fact she was listed as missing.

The Winnipeg Police Service suspended both officers but one is back on duty. The other remains suspended.

WPS spokesman Const. Rob Carver had no updates to share on her case. But he said it’s still a priority for homicide investigators.

“This is an ongoing investigation that the Winnipeg Police Service is devoting significant resources to,” he said.

“The case is not cold. The case is currently being worked on by homicide investigators. It is still part of the homicide unit’s prime focus; it has not moved to a cold-case status and we don’t foresee anything in the future that would suggest that it’s going to move there.”

— with files from Katie May

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca