The Black Rod

What better way to mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation than by injecting some truth into the Truth column. Then the Reconciliation can follow with the critics of Winnipeg Mayor candidate Don Woodstock issuing their apologies to him for telling the truth at an all-candidates forum held by the  Council of Women of Winnipeg . Woodstock stirred a mini-tempest when he addressed the topic of ways to improve safety for women. Another  candidate had raised the issue  of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and Woodstrock responded by saying  Indigenous men bore much of the blame and needed to do more to stop violence against women. The knee-jerk reaction wasn't long in coming. MKO Grand Chief Garrison Settee was interviewed by CBC. "Settee said on the path toward reconciliation, Indigenous people are trying to meet non-Indigenous people halfway and don't need someone like Woodstock spreading stereotypes. "He should drop out of the race and work on ...

The Winnipeg Police force has managed to stay under the radar of the national news organizations for over three weeks now, but once their luck runs out the results will be incendiary. How Winnipeg police conduct a missing persons investigation into the disappearance of Christine Wood will become the test case for the recently announced Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women Inquiry.  Winnipeg will be the stand-in for all police departments across Canada in similar investigations. And so far, the example is not good. Here's where we would normally give the background to the case. The known facts.  Except that the "known facts" in the disappearance of Christine Wood keep changing from week to week. And the police have been no help in keeping the public informed. In fact, they're partly responsible for the confusion. Nevertheless, here's what we know culled from various news accounts. * 21-year-old Christine Wood was in Winnipeg with her parents to accompany a...

Killing a myth is a lot like killing a Hydra.  Lop off one head and two equally hideous grow back. Tina Fontaine became the poster girl of the murdered and missing aboriginal women movement. Like Doublemint gum, she was two, two, two in one---missing AND murdered. The biggest myth regarding 15-year-old Tina was also the most endearing to the M&M crowd --- only hours before she disappeared,  to be eventually killed by a person or persons unknown, two Winnipeg policemen had her in their custody but let her go her merry way despite the fact that she had been reported as a missing person.  If only they had done their job, she would be alive today. If only, if only... Then, fourteen months ago (yes, a year and two months ago) The Black Rod reported exclusively that Tina Fontaine WAS NOT MISSING when the police met up with her in the early morning of Aug. 8, 2014.  Nobody informed police that she was a missing person until the following day, Aug. 9, 2014. ...

One year after teenager Tina Fontaine's body was discovered  in the Red River, two memorial events were held.  One was on the Sagkeeng Reserve where she was raised by a great- aunt from the age of three;  another, much smaller, was at the Alexander Docks near where her body was located accidentally by a search party looking for someone else. The news media was out in force, feeding on the grief.  But none of the "professional journalists" seemed to notice that one important person wasn't at either of these gatherings. Tina's mother. At first glance, maybe it came as no surprise that Valentina Duck wasn't there. She's persona non grata on the reserve, where the responsible side of the family blames her for leading her departed 15-year-old daughter deep into the dark side where the seeds of her death are thought to lie. But her absence at the Alexander Docks is more troubling. The inner city is her turf. There's more than one connection wi...

Fifteen-year-old Tina Fontaine was pregnant at the time she was killed. That's just a smidgen of what her older brother Charles revealed during an interview last week with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) in which he delivered a carpet bombing of details about Tina's sad life, horrific death, dysfunctional family and possibly murderous associates. He blamed his and Tina's mother for getting Tina hooked on the hard drug crystal meth and into prostitution.  He said his mother told him she was disowning him and "that if she ever sees me she's going to beat the shit out of me just like she did to Tina." This provides confirmation of a statement made a year ago when the Winnipeg Free Press interviewed Thelma Favel, who raised Tina Fontaine, on the Sagkeeng Reserve from when she was a child.   "... Fontaine claimed she had been beaten up by her mother and even texted pictures of her face, (Favel) said." (Winnipeg Free Press, ...

Winnipeg Police issued a false news release Wednesday that was designed to mislead the public while simultaneously making two serving officers into scapegoats for Chief Devon Clunis. Here's how most relevant portion of the news release read: Winnipeg Police Professional Standards Investigation The Winnipeg Police Homicide Unit has been actively investigating the murder of Tina Fontaine since August, 2014. This investigation is on-going. Numerous people have been interviewed, and a number of forensic tests have been conducted.   During the course of the investigation, Homicide investigators discovered that Tina Fontaine was reported as a missing person on July 31st, 2014. Investigators also discovered that two members of the Winnipeg Police Service had contact with Ms. Fontaine on August 8th, 2014, approximately 24 hours before her disappearance.   Chief Clunis was informed of these events on September 3rd, 2014, and immediately direct...

Winnipeg Police Chief Devon "Mack Daddy" Clunis is a big believer in prayer, and right now he's praying you don't find out that he might have been responsible for why teen runaway Tina Fontaine wasn't picked up by police the day before she was last seen alive. By now everyone knows that two officers spoke with 15-year-old Tina Fontaine in the wee hours of August 8 after stopping a vehicle in which she was a passenger.  They took down her name, we're told, then sent her on her way.  But at the time, so the story goes, she had been reported to police as missing, and should have been apprehended. The police department revealed the contact with Tina last month and announced an internal investigation of the circumstances.  Friday, Clunis said the resulting report would be sent to the Crown Attorney's office for review, implying that charges could be laid against the two police officers. What he failed to say is that Tina Fontaine was probably released b...

The news that Winnipeg police are planning to spend a million dollars on a search of the local garbage dump for the body of a missing part-time prostitute reminded us that we weren't finished with our first installment of our Online Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women. http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-black-rod-online-inquiry-into.html Two weeks ago, police announced an arrest in the stabbing death of our first subject, Cherie Lynn Richard, and the case dropped off the radar of the mainstream media in town. That's when we accidentally stumbled across the bombshell news that crystallized the lessons of her death. Deep, deep, deep within the story of the arrest carried in the July 27-29 issue of the free daily Winnipeg Metro was this stunning sentence: "Police allege Richard was stabbed after a verbal altercation took place over drugs." If true, it was a citywide scoop, something reporte...