It has been seven years since two young girls from the Kitigan Zibi reserve near Maniwaki disappeared without a trace.
Shannon Alexander and Maisy Odjik were last seen on September 6th 2008. Now- La Sûreté du Québec is making the latest appeal to the public for help by releasing age-progressed sketches of what the 24 year old girls may look like today.
"We think that someone somewhere knows something that happened- that's why we are asking for the public anywhere,” says Sgt. Marc Tessier, a Sûreté du Québecspokesperson.
Over the years, Quebec Police worked with the RCMP, OPP, and the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg police department. Organizations Enfant-retour Québec and Missing Children Society of Canada also helping in the search. There have been possible sightings of the girls, even in Ottawa- but none have brought answers.
Tessier says, “Over 100 people were interviewed, they are from not only in Quebec but in Ontario, and even across Canada, and in the States.”
Alexander is described as five feet nine, 145 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. She is said to have a scar on her left knee.
Odjick is 5 feet 10, 120 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. She has a piercing in her left eyebrow and two on her lower lip.
But there is frustration in the Maniwaki community that not enough has been done to help these girls. Dawn Harvard is President of the Native Women's Organization of Canada. “At the time they initially disappeared, the lack of response and search was really noted so it is good to see some action.” She hopes the sketches can help the family find answers.
But Harvard says cases like this happen too often. “The case of Shannon Alexander and Maisy Odjick is just one of a number of tragic stories where our girls are going missing- it's part of a larger crisis.”
Harvard says a national inquiry into the missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada is a needed more than ever.
She says, “Before we have more and more, yet another generation of girls who will go missing, who are taken from our families, that's why it is so criticial to see concrete action.”
Calls for a national inquiry have been growing since an RCMP review last year revealed that over 1,000 aboriginal women have been murdered or gone missing since 1980 -- and under the new Liberal government, the first phase of the inquiry could come as early as spring 2016.
