‘One day at a time,’ mother pledges

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This article was published 06/03/2015 (3902 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

AFTER getting more bad news Thursday, the “flummoxed,” shocked, but still-smiling parents of slain Winnipeg 13-year-old Candace Derksen invited the news media into their home to talk about the Supreme Court decision that the man convicted of killing their daughter in 1984 deserves a new trial.

“We’re going to take it one day at a time,” Wilma Derksen said two hours after learning about the high court’s decision. Just like they have for the last 30 years. “We are totally flummoxed — totally in shock.”

Sitting on the couch of their Fort Richmond bungalow surrounded by reporters, Wilma and Cliff Derksen said they don’t need another trial to convince them Mark Edward Grant killed their daughter.

“We’re at peace,” said Wilma.

“I’m satisfied,” said Cliff.

In 2007, Grant was charged with Candace’s murder based on new DNA evidence and in 2011, after a five-week trial, was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years without parole. The case was appealed and ended up before the Supreme Court of Canada.

When asked how Candace — who would be 43 now — would feel about the Supreme Court calling for a new trial for Grant, Cliff said it’s hard to imagine.

“The only way I can ever imagine Candace at 43 is to look at other people who are 43 years old… It’s really hard to know, but Candace had our ideals that she grew up with. She had the basics we had, our philosophy of life,” said Cliff.

“I think she would be very concerned about the safety of other children and anxious that there would be justice,” said Wilma. “That’s the type of person she was.”

Notions of ever having closure or leaving Candace in the past are not something they entertain.

“She still feels alive,” said Wilma. “We can still remember her. We can still feel her,” she said. “Every trial room we’ve been in, in the Supreme Court of Canada, we felt she was there.”

Wilma still feels Candace’s spirit and knows her legacy lives on.

“Of our three children, Candace was the sanguine one,” her mom said. “She was the one who inherited the love of people. Even as a little four-year-old, she would go out on the front steps and bang my pots and pans. I’d say ‘Candace, what are you doing?’ She’d say ‘Just wait, Mom’ then all the children came out of their houses, then I knew exactly what she was doing. She was in her glory. Even very early on and right through her 13 years she was so sanguine and so loved people. She’d just brighten up. I still feel she’s presiding. She’s saying ‘Hey Mom — I’m still a story!'”

She is, in more ways than one.

Wilma said plans for Candace House to help victims of serious crime in Manitoba are in the works. The goal of the “non-profit, non-adversarial, non-partisan charity” is to provide a safe and comforting refuge within walking distance of the provincial Law Courts Building. The group is still looking for a place downtown for Candace House after plans to repurpose and move into the closed Dalnavert Museum were scrapped.

Wilma, an author who has published several books, wrote This Mortal Coil, an ebook about the trial of Grant that was released on Kindle Feb. 28. It’s set in the courtroom and includes “the stories of the family trauma, the police investigation and the ongoing public debate that has lasted almost three decades,” the Kindle description said.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca