As we head away from Red dress day – a time when thousands of people spread across B.C. and Canada gathered to honour the missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirited – the family of one of the murdered girls has spoken about her life.

May 19 may not hold much significance for most people. But for the family of the young Monica Rose Jack, the day holds meaning as they celebrate her life and reflect on her passing.

Monica was 12 when she was tragically abducted while riding a bike to her home on Quilchena Reserve outside Merritt, B.C. on May 6, 1978.

She had only picked out the bike that same day as it was a much wanted birthday gift from her father. 

Soon after her disappearance, her bike was found discarded near a pullout at Nicola Lake. Police and Monica's family would begin to search for her. She had been taken close to her home, just over a hill away.

Monica, on the other hand, was considered missing for 17 years, creating a case that shocked communities locally and internationally.

"It didn’t only affect our family, it affected the whole community. Because prior to that, I think we all lived with rose-coloured glasses. No one thought anything like that could ever happen here in Merritt,” said Carol Michell, Monica's oldest sister.

To this day effects of her disappearance and murder can be seen in the Nicola Valley. Locals who grew-up listening to the case on the news still talk about it.

For some, her case and its legacy inspired local movements advocating for justice and remembrance for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, like Carole Basil from Lower Nicola Indian Band, who organized this year's MMIWG2S+ march in Lower Nicola. 

To this day, Indigenous women are subject to the highest rates of violence and homicide in Canada according to A 2023 Statistics Canada study, making up five to seven per cent of all homicide victims from 2009 to 2021.

One area in B.C. remains notoriously dangerous for Indigenous women. This place is a stretch of highway spanning over 700km over Highways 16, and later expanded to include police cases on highways 5, 24 and 97. Hitchhikers are recommended not to travel on this route.

RCMP officially recognize 18 cases of murder and disappearances from 1969 to 2006 along Highway of Tears in accordance with project E-Pana. Chronologically, Monica's case is the eighth official investigation.

Today, 47 years after Monica's disappearance, five of her remaining relatives gathered at the home of her aunt to discuss not only the trauma of her death, but of their blissful memories of Monica as well. 

With the family spread out across B.C., for some of them, it is the first time they are getting together to talk about Monica.

Her family said that everyone around her remembered Monica as a kind-hearted girl always looking to help people.

In the time before she disappeared, she was starting to find her artistic personality as well.

"She had the kindest heart. She had the kindest spirit,” Debbie John, Monica's cousin, said. 

"She was a very helpful girl. (She) helped everybody she could in school, helping all the students that needed help. I think that's why (her teacher) liked her,” said Monica's aunt Maggie Shuter. "She was good at sports, she was good at everything and she was starting art. And she was proud of it.”

Monica was an adventurous soul who explored the outdoors with her siblings and cousins. She was one who always saw the beauty in things. Her family talked about one of her pieces of art she was making before her disappearance. 

Around that time, Monica was getting into carving. She started cutting into a log she found floating in Nicola Lake near her home, carving a beaver head into the piece of wood. The family still has it in its unfinished state to this day.

Adventurous with a passion for the outdoors, her family recalls stories of Monica getting into all sorts of trouble with animals.

"All the kids, we'd always be doing something,” said Debbie. She recalled the various animals their father used to keep around their house; chickens, pigs or geese. She retold a story involving Monica and a stray squirrel that they saved. Debbie joked about how Monica used to let the squirrel sit on her shoulder and bring it around with her.

Her younger sister, Heather Hemphill, remembered a story involving Monica and a horse at a campsite near Spences Bridge. 

"We stopped at a campsite while traveling on Highway 8. Monica was so excited, she took off running through the campsite. She ran down a short hill and she found a horse tied up. No one was around, so she came back with it and she asked mom if she could keep it,” Heather joked, sparking laughter from all her family.

"(That) was the first time I had ever seen her cry, because she wasn't able to take that horse home. She was going to ride it home!” Maggie joked.

Other stories of Monica included her and Debbie skating on and falling into frozen lakes. Or times when she would turn mundane chores, like gathering water when their pipes would freeze into fun for her as she would swing her buckets around in circles to make her family laugh.

"She got home with half a bucket of water, but she had a good time doing it, and it made us all happy and laugh,” Carol said.

Topping great memories of her, Carol remembers one thing about Monica that triumphed all others; her singing. She remembered when she and Monica were kids, they would enjoy music and sing songs together in their shared room. They would jump on their beds, dancing while pretending their hair brushes were microphones.

She then remembered how years later, on the night of Carol's wedding, Monica would sing Going to the Chapel by the Crystals with her hairbrush in her hand.

"That's just the kind of kid she was, that years later, she remembered it. It was important enough to her, and she sang it at the (wedding) reception,” Carol said.

For many of her relatives, Monica was the heart of their family. It made losing her all that more difficult. 

"I always prayed she would come back, or be one of those ones that got sold to a rich family, and she had this awesome life,” said Debbie. 'I prayed for that. I prayed for that movie, but it wasn't (reality).”

After her disappearance, Monica's family spent countless hours looking for her. 

"We went looking for her and asking her friends, phoning around. We looked for days, but we always looked towards Kamloops. We didn’t go towards Merritt. She was heading to Quilchena, so we didn’t look towards Merritt,” Maggie said.

Years later, Monica's remains were found by forestry workers next to a ravine near a logging road on Swakum Mountain.

"A constable agreed to take us to (where Monica's body was found) around 10 a.m. The whole field was full of cars of people who wanted to come up with us,” Carol said. 'We all finally arrived then had to climb a mountain. As you crest the mountain, there’s this large ravine. And down at the other end (of the ravine), you can see the hills that are on the other side of Merritt. And (Monica) was down there, under a tree, a big ponderosa pine. And she must have seen that mountain and knew it was Merritt. She must have run down that ravine.”

Finding the body was the final confirmation of Monica's fate. For Carol, the finality didn't give her comfort.

"We didn’t know if she was dead or alive from 1978 until 1994 and I always thought it would be so much easier if I just knew what happened to her, if she was dead or alive, but it wasn’t (easier),” she said. 

Carol often dreamed about Monica coming home and that she was found safe on Swakum Mountain. After they found her body, the dreams didn't stop haunting her.

"I never allowed myself to grieve for my sister because I never gave up hope that she was  gonna come home someday,” she said. 'I would think, ‘Monica’s going to be 15 this year, she’s going to come home. Monica’s going to be 18 this year and she’s going to come home. Monica is going to be 24 this year, for sure she’s going to come home.”

In 2014, RCMP ran an undercover operation targeting Garry Handlen, one of the earliest suspects in Moncia's murder. After some time, Handlen confessed to strangling Monica to death. Right before police would announce the arrest at a press conference in Vancouver, Carol said she had dreamed about Monica once again.

"I dreamed about her again, that she had come home. When I woke up, I realized she was still the same age. She had never aged. And it was I woke up knowing, finally, deep in my heart, she was never coming home,” she said.

In 2019, Handlen's case went to trial. Monica's relatives attended as much as they could. Carol said she sat behind Handlen in the courtroom everyday.

"I thought he must be some kind of monster. I had to be ready for court because he’s probably a monster, and I didn't want to be afraid of him. So every morning when I got in the courtroom, I went and sat behind him, and they brought him in, and he sat down, and I looked at him, and I told him, ‘I’m here. I’m right here behind you' to let him know he didn't scare me,” she said.

During the trial, Carol said the defence played a video everyday – one minute of it at a time – of Handlen confessing to what he did to Monica, then discussed it.

"It was like torture,” she said. "When (Handlen) said, ‘I lost it, I lost it and I strangled her,' that told me, right there, that she fought for her life right up until the end, otherwise why would he have lost it?”

Carol also thanked the jurors of Handlen's trial. She commended them for paying close attention to the case, and the important decision they made of his verdict.

"I was getting scared every day that went by. I was like, Oh my God, (the jury) is gonna find him not guilty. I was really scared, but they came back and (Handlen) was guilty,” she said. 

Handlen was sentenced to life in prison with no opportunity for parole for the first 15 years.

Handlen later attempted to overturn the decision, but the appeal was denied in 2022. His arrest makes Monica's case the only one of the 18 official Highway of Tears victims to receive a conviction for a suspect.

As Monica's case was finalized, her family had to find ways to heal from the trauma. Carol had moved back to the Nicola Valley right after the case ended in 2019.

"I moved back home because I still had a lot of trauma to work through. So I came home to heal,” she said.

Since then she has started art therapy, and has made multiple pieces in the honour of her late sister.

Heather said that talking about Monica has helped her heal. As Monica's youngest sister, much of Heather's memory of her sister has faded, partly due to time and partly due to her trauma blocking those memories out.

After the trial, she got a tattoo on her left-shoulder in Monica's memory; a bouquet of roses signifying in honour of Monica's middle name; Rose.

Maggie has found peace through meditation. 

"After we finished court, I took it very hard. And I went to the water that helped. I put my hands and feet in the sand. That’s what the old people used to say, ‘put your hands and feet in the sand and do prayer,” she said.

While it helped her heal, she mentions the memory of her niece is still painful to recall.

"It still hurts, I don't think it will stop.”

For Debbie, she has loved to remember Monica through things her cousin had passed down. One such curio is a buckskin dress that Monica wore in a parade years ago. Recently, she's seen her daughter wear that dress during a traditional special in Vancouver that she won.

Debbie has continued her love and mastery of beading as well. As the family gathered at their house, she had started beading another piece. When she started she didn't know what it would be. Eventually she decided it would become a red dress.