Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests little article (new law) in florida!

yeah, canada rules.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20051007/SUICIDE07/TPNational/?query=suicide

WINNIPEG -- For 11-year-old Kathleen Beardy it was all simply too much.

First she watched as her father Kelly was handcuffed and dragged from the family home by two police officers.

Then she was forced to endure the seemingly endless taunts of neighbourhood bullies in her tough Winnipeg district.

Finally, her delight when she bought a small puppy for $2 turned to dismay as bullies made off with her new pet, telling her they would sell it.

Sapped of the will to live, last Saturday evening Kathleen climbed onto a pile of gravel and, looping the puppy's leash around the low-lying bough of an elm tree, hanged herself.

At first, when her friends saw her, they thought she was fooling around. "Come down, the joke is over," one of them cried to her.

It was only as they came closer they realized what she had done and began to scream in terror. One of the neighbourhood toughs even tried, and failed, to untie her.

By the time her mother, Christina Beardy, arrived several minutes later, Kathleen was dead.

"The police were there," Ms. Beardy said. "They asked if I was family but I didn't know who they were talking about. When I realized it was Kathleen there I just starting shouting 'Oh please no!' "

At the very least the tragedy of Kathleen Beardy is a terrible insight into the brutality of life on the streets of Canada's inner cities.

According to local media reports, both her mother and father were remanded by police early last week, leaving Kathleen and four other siblings in the care of her pregnant sister Beverly, 17, for several days.

But what has made the case overtly political is that Kathleen's family said the girl had witnessed the allegedly brutal and unwarranted arrest of her father a week before her death, which sowed the seeds of her mental torment.

After the injuries, he complains of increasing headaches and pains in his legs. The skin is still missing from his knees and pictures held by his lawyer show abrasions to his upper body.

Meanwhile Ms. Beardy has spent the week struggling to arrange Kathleen's funeral. The cost of the service is a little more than $5,500 but she said so far she has only raised about $1,600.

"I asked provincial welfare for help but they said they only provide money for food and shelter, not for grieving," she said.

On Tuesday, Ms. Beardy took her children to dress Kathleen's body.

They tied a sash to her forehead, coloured her lips with gloss and pulled on her favourite dancing dress.

The family also made a collage of photographs of Kathleen's short life. One showed her standing next to a frozen Lake Winnipeg smiling. Another showed her at a bible school.

While searching for more photographs, Ms. Beardy came across Kathleen's status card.

"She was proud to be an Indian and very interested in our traditions," Ms. Beardy said. "She believed in both aboriginal culture and the Bible.

"She loved going to church."

In keeping with her Christian faith, Kathleen's body was laid out in an open white casket decorated with pink silk at the Aboriginal Funeral Chapel on Wednesday night.

Honouring aboriginal tradition, Ms. Beardy carefully cut long, plaited braids from her own head and those of her daughters and laid them in the coffin.

At the spot where Kathleen died, a shabby back alley between abandoned houses strewn with old bits of roofing, friends and neighbours set up a small shrine to mark her death.

The pile of gravel she used to kill herself was covered with teddy bears -- brown, white and pink -- and handwritten messages from well-wishers and classmates.

At the site, Winnipeggers of all ethnicities came to pay their respects.

A traditional aboriginal fire was lit under a thin plywood shelter to protect it from the first snowfall of the season. The bullies returned the puppy to the family.

Mary Sinclair, Kathleen's grandmother, had flown to Winnipeg from Victoria when she heard the news. She said: "We would never have thought it of Kathleen. She was always so good and so lively and she never seemed to have any problems. Maybe we just didn't know what was going on inside.""