Uncover - S10: "The Village 2" E5: Accountability and Apologies

Episode Date: July 1, 2021

Justin discovers a shocking failure in the investigation into Alloura's death and poses tough questions to Toronto’s police chief. Trans activists honour Alloura and others who have inspired change, and who deserved better. Note: If you're in crisis or just looking for someone to talk to, try the Trans Lifeline’s Hotline — a peer support phone service run by trans people for trans and questioning folks: CAN [phone] or US [phone] For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/the-villiage-season-2-transcripts-listen-1.6076988

This is a perfect storm of conspiracy theories. On December 15th, 2017, Canadian billionaires Honey and Barry Sherman were found dead in their mansion. To this day, the case remains unsolved. Counterfeit and copied pharmaceuticals was much more lucrative than heroin, cocaine, and the rest of it. If you live by the sword, you die by the sword. Listen to the no-good, terribly kind, wonderful lives and tragic deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. We are all here today listening to the results of this review for one reason.

Because people went missing. Because lives were lost. The public is entitled to know the truth. So are the loved ones and friends of those who went missing. Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdul-Bazir Faizi, Majid Kayan, Sorush Mamoudi, Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, Dean Lisowick, Salim Essin, Andrew Kinsman, Tess Ritchie, Allura Wells. In September of 2018, Toronto's Police Services Board appointed retired judge Gloria Epstein to investigate how the city's police handled missing persons cases and its relationship with the queer community.

This is the story we told you about in the first season of the podcast. The story of how a serial killer, Bruce MacArthur, was able to operate for seven years without being caught. And to answer why investigations into other missing people were slapdash, inconsistent, and often bungled. One of those cases was Allura. Allura Wells, a member of Toronto's trans community, also went missing in 2017. Although her bodily remains had been in the morgue for months, it took too long before they were linked to her disappearance. This could have been done very differently.

The final report was released in April 2021, and it was scathing. It identified systemic failures to take missing persons cases seriously, and a failure by the Toronto Police Service to recognize, or even to understand, the daily realities of those who live in the village. I conclude that many of the investigations I examined were seriously flawed. I'm Justin Ling. This is The Village. I will remember every interview I conducted. None more so than the time I spent with Michael Wells, Elora Wells' father, as he described his experience in reporting his daughter's disappearance to the police.

Proper missing person investigations should not depend on whose voices are the loudest or most empowered in sounding the alarm. The goal must be to make any future public inquiry or systemic review unnecessary. This is how we truly can honor the lives lost. Justice Epstein led the review, but the work was done by a small team, including prominent lawyer Mark Sandler. Those failings existed at a systemic level and raised all kinds of concerns about culture, about practices, about resources, about systemic discrimination, and more generally about how the service relates to those communities over and above how missing persons cases are done. Sandler has worked on a ton of these reviews into police practices. A large part of his career has been focused on investigating when police fail, especially when it affects underserved communities. In the first season of this show,

you heard from friends of some of the missing men, particularly of Skandaraj Navaratnam and Hamid Kayhan. They tried to ring the alarm bells early on. When you finally realize you actually have three missing persons cases that look similar, and you have a community coming out and saying, this has all the hallmarks of a serial killer, you have the friends of those men saying, this looks like a serial killer, our friend wouldn't just disappear like this. Police weren't willing to kind of upgrade that to the level of a full homicide investigation. And that's the problem. So you've put your finger on the problem. And I have to say, some of the officers, candidly, who spoke to us, acknowledged that this was a problem.

Sandler picked up on something which has always bugged me about these cases. It's just how randomly they were handled. And the reason that struck us so profoundly was that you would see one investigator that would reach out to the LGBTQ community to see whether some leads could be pursued. You'd see others, by and large, that never did so. So it was happenstance whether an investigative step would be taken in one feature as opposed to the other.

And that just can't be best practice in policing. Leave aside issues about discrimination and marginalized and vulnerable communities. Police officers have to know what the essential steps are in any missing person investigation. Otherwise, opportunities are going to be lost, which we saw here. In all my years of working on this story, it is galling just how uninformed many of the cops were and still are about the queer community. Sometimes they didn't even realize the missing person was gay. the queer community. Sometimes they didn't even realize the missing person was gay. In the majority of the cases, the officers became aware at some point of this, of the sexual orientation of the people who had gone missing. But in a number of instances,

they didn't know what to do with it. You know, the service has an LGBTQ2S plus liaison officer. The liaison officer was virtually never used as a resource. The inquiry lays bare just how many times MacArthur could have been caught and wasn't. Some of it was technological. Some of it was bureaucratic. But a massive part of the problem was the police just not listening to what they were being told by the community. There were opportunities that were lost from as early as 2010, another one in 2011, another one in 2013, another one later in 2013 that was very significant, another one in 2016. There were a lot of opportunities to get to the bottom of the identity of the person who was killing members of the community. When MacArthur was brought in for questioning, police didn't connect the dots. So here you had a man who was in the interview room who had a connection beyond just seeing these three men in a bar in the village,

who had a connection of significance potentially with all three of the men, and who had a criminal conviction for hitting a man in the gay village over the head with a lead pipe for no reason. Talk about a lost opportunity. It wasn't just about sexuality. It was about drug use, homelessness, race, immigration status. And the assumption would be, and it's a phrase you hear often on this case, the assumption would be that if this were three white women,

there would have been all of these forces marshaled. Do you think that all, there would have been all of these forces marshaled. Do you think that all of this would have been done if it were three upper class, you know, white folks? The reason why the analysis is more nuanced is because missing persons cases were not being given priority generally. It's not just about are these people white from Rosedale? It's about who's empowered, who's being heard and who's not. So one of the things that Judge Epstein speaks a lot about is intersectionality. because they're transgender or simply because they're gay or simply because they're black, as opposed to there are an intersection of personal identifiers that explain differential

treatment, that explain over-policing, under-servicing. The fact that these people are marginalized and vulnerable meant that they didn't have the same voices to be heard. that they didn't have the same voices to be heard. They couldn't exert the same kinds of pressure on the police to give the cases the prominence they deserved. Judge Epstein can't say, don't criminalize drug use, don't criminalize sex work, don't criminalize HIV, AIDS, sexual activity in the way that

it has been criminalized, that's well outside of her mandate. But what she could say and did say is that the way in which these issues are criminalized represents a major barrier to people coming forward and providing information. Maybe Judge Epstein can't say it, but I can. The consistent decision by every level of government to criminalize these things, drug use, sex work, homelessness, HIV AIDS, it directly contributes to the queer community being unsafe. You don't need to look any further than these frustrating cases to understand that.

In the past few years, a conversation about defunding the police has gained momentum. While that debate is complicated, at the very least, it means taking some responsibilities away from the exclusive domain of police and instead bringing in civilians to help on cases that desperately need investigating. It's unfair to policing and it's also unfair to the community to think that the police should play all these roles. Law enforcement, social service agency, public health. You know, they're not well suited to perform all of those roles.

Most of the cases that Judge Epstein looked at have been solved. Too late, maybe, but solved. But in particular, I wanted to ask Sandler about Alora's case. The review actually interviewed the officer who got the call on a hot summer day four years ago that a body had been found in the Rosedale Ravine. He acknowledged to us in the interview that he had no idea what trans agencies or community groups existed that he could call upon to assist him in identifying someone who

was obviously a member of the trans community. And he acknowledged that. It shouldn't be for somebody who finds the body to have to take the steps to get the police to be engaging with community, right? The trans community is severely hurting. They are highly victimized by violence. severely hurting. They are highly victimized by violence. They are not accepted at times, even within the LGBTQ2S plus umbrella. That's a significant issue as well. Officers just don't understand trans men and women in the same way as many of them now have a greater appreciation and respect for sexual orientation, the trans relationship has a huge way to go. Judge Epstein's report makes 151 recommendations. They are clear, detailed, and they come with steps on how police are supposed to implement them.

But a report alone can't change a culture, nor can it build those relationships. That's why the recommendations span everything from recruitment, promotions, educational requirements, a new approach to consultative committees, a central role for liaison officers as opposed to a more secondary role. We've tried to address just so many aspects of how policing is done. But the bottom line is that we just won't know how effective this will be until we see what happens in the next year or so. This will be until we see what happens in the next year or so. Judge Epstein was asked to produce a report on how to fix many broken aspects of policing in Toronto.

But for a lot of trans people, many of these things can't be fixed. More training, more education, better hiring. In the end, it all just leads to more policing. For trans people like Morgan Page, the queer historian, the way to fix the tension between trans people and the police is to simply have less policing. There's a bigger story to tell than individual missing and murdered cases. There is a much larger story about general violence and discrimination, but also about the way our community has come together. So the reason the trans community in Canada is so strong

is because of the murders of Deanna Wilkinson, Junior Keegan, and Brenda Ludgate. It's only because of that that the 519 began the trans community services, which then inspire community services all across the country to pop up. And so I think the bigger story for me is about the way that our community has worked really, really hard across decades to take care of each other. Because society is not going to take care of us. The police aren't going to care for us. They're never going to care for us. Even, you know, 50 years from now, the police aren't going to care about us. But we care about us. We're here today. So to me, that is the even bigger story. To me, that is the even bigger story.

On April 13th, 2021, Interim Police Chief James Raymer held a press conference to react to Justice Epstein's report. He's there to deliver the Toronto Police's mea culpa. Justice Epstein has given our service much to reflect on about who we are and how we carry out the jobs we are entrusted to do. Her findings of failures and how we conducted some missing persons investigations, particularly those in marginalized or vulnerable communities, are accepted and the shortcomings she identified are inexcusable. We know that many in Toronto's LGBTQ2S plus communities felt and still feel that our communications deepened a sense of mistrust between us. That was not the service's intention and we apologize for the anger hurt and damage that was caused. Others have said we were not

hearing them, that their fears were not taken seriously and even that they were blamed for the victimization they experienced. None of this is acceptable. None of this should have happened. As we all know, tragically, lives were lost. To the family, friends, and community members left behind, we apologize. He wasn't the only one apologizing. The 519 Community Center also issued a blunt apology.

They accepted responsibility for not going public with the information that a transgender woman was found in the Rosedale Ravine. Yeah, no, I'm good to go. But I still had a ton of questions for the chief. First off, thanks for doing this. I'm happy we could finally find a time to make it work. Yeah, no, I appreciate it.

Thanks. I'm happy to be here, Justin. After weeks of back and forth, I managed to get a one-on-one interview. I really wanted to get to the bottom of what exactly he says isn't working about policing, what he intends to do to fix it, and where the investigation into Elora's death stands.

How do you ensure that after this, after one of Canada's worst serial killers targeted the community in Toronto, how do you ensure that this report actually becomes something substantive and changes the way things operate so that it doesn't happen again? And that's a great question, Justin. It's the work that we'll do on those 151 recommendations, and we will complete each and every one of them, and we'll do that in partnership with the community. They will be part of it.

And I think that's going to be very different from what's been done in the past. They'll be on the ground floor, helping us with procedures we put in place, helping us with training that we'll be doing, ground floor helping us with procedures we put in place, helping us with training that we'll be doing, and helping us complete those recommendations. And it's going to be a lot of hard work and it's going to take some time. And I'm really hoping that in time we're going to improve that relationship. And all I'm asking for the community to do is give us that opportunity. Give us that one more opportunity to get it right. is give us that opportunity.

Give us that one more opportunity to get it right. Obviously, there have been very specific points of contention between the community and the Toronto Police Service. I think maybe one of the most visible in the last few years has been pride and insistence from the Toronto Police Service that it wants its officers in the parade, in uniform, with their service pistols. And an insistence from Pride and others in the community that that's inappropriate. They would prefer not. Not that there will be a parade this year, but if there is one next year, what would your position be?

I want to get our officers back into the Pride parade. It's important for this membership. We have a lot of members that want to participate in the Pride parade. Would you be open to not having officers either armed or having them not in uniform? I mean, that has been the consistent ask. Actually, I'm open to those discussions. I'm certainly open to that kind of dialogue, Justin. A big call from many activists, who I don't think are any great fans of the Toronto Police Service, has been to defund the police. And part of what they're asking for is to get police off some of these

cases, off some of these files or out of some of these interviews. Do you think there is a level of compromise or a spot where you can meet in the middle? Well, let me just say this, Justin, to start off. We've been defunding for eight or nine years now as a police organization while the city's been growing in leaps and bounds as the fourth biggest city in North America. So finding alternative methods of service delivery so we can devote our resources to other areas that we need to be doing is very advantageous and is something we want to explore. While the Toronto Police Service's budget may not be increasing in line with Toronto's population, like Chief Ramer says, it is certainly increasing. Its 2020 budget was more than $1 billion. Over a decade, its funding actually increased by more

than $160 million. And of that budget, the homicide unit gets just $12 million. The sex crimes unit is just a little bit bigger. And yet Toronto City Council has consistently rejected proposals to cut the overall Toronto Police Services budget and reallocate some of those resources elsewhere. Getting the best service for the public is what we're after. And if that means it's medical specialists or community workers that are helping us with missing persons,

and if that works, that's what we want to do. And I should say, Toronto has already started some of this work. Increasingly, when officers respond to calls for help, they will be accompanied by nurses, social workers, harm reduction specialists, and mental health professionals. But there's calls to do more. In recent years, under pressure from activists, other cities have opted to pull back on policing non-violent crimes. They've stopped arresting people like Cassandra and Elora. They've tried to reduce tensions between police and marginalized communities, including sex workers and street-involved folks. Toronto has not been as proactive.

You've seen other police forces across North America talk about a less aggressive approach to sex work, to drug possession, but I'm wondering where you think the balance should be there in terms of how you maybe respond to community complaints, keep the public safe, but also maybe use ticketing powers or arrest as a last resort. You know what, I think our members utilize really a lot of discretion on some of these activities and it would include that work as well. We do now, as part of our human trafficking unit, have a component of it where we have a social worker working with a police officer to work with those communities to help them and to maybe get people out of that area of work.

You know, I think what you hear from a lot of sex workers, particularly in the city, is that it's not that they want more human trafficking charges laid. It's not that they want an escape route. Some of them are choosing to do this. And what they want is an ability to do it safely and without having to, you know, to hide from cops, without having to do it in the shadows, without having to park in risky neighborhoods or in abandoned lots. Well, I think the police are only one part of the problem or one part of the solution, if you will, Justin. It has to be some collaboration with the community, you know, and the city as to how we want to proceed with respect to dealing with that issue.

You know, in many cases, as a police agency, we respond to complaints. We respond to complaints. But I wonder, though, because a minute ago you said you sort of acknowledged that there were instances of systemic bias that are present in your officers. At the same time, you're saying discretion is incredibly important. Listen, even Justice Epstein in her report acknowledged that there was no overt bias apart on members that influenced any of the trajectory of our investigations. Implicit bias, yeah, I think that exists in society and we're part of society. Systemic issues, absolutely.

And those we're trying to fix. But again, I think in most cases, our members will utilize discretion and strike a balance. Honestly, this is naive. It has been really clear for a long time that the Toronto Police Service does a bad job of policing and protecting marginalized communities. The Epstein report lays out very clearly how that implicit and systemic bias hampered their ability to catch a serial killer. It sounds to me like the chief wants credit for recognizing the problem without actually having to deal with the solution. Lots of people in Toronto will tell you, I don't trust the police to treat me fairly because I'm a sex worker or

because I'm trans or homeless or I use drugs. Giving police more discretion, it doesn't fix that. Stopping the police from criminalizing those communities altogether does. But in fairness to the chief, police are there to enforce the laws. If we want to get rid of criminalization, that is really a decision that falls to our politicians. Good afternoon, Prime Minister. You know, it was six years ago on the campaign trail that you criticized candidates for prostitution laws.

You promised to study those laws and potentially fix them. You acknowledged that they were causing harm for sex workers in Canada. You are now in court defending those laws. What has changed about your philosophy when it comes to criminal law now that you've been in government for six years? I don't think anything has changed. I think the focus continues to be on allowing evidence to drive policy and not, as previous governments have done, to let policy dictate the facts they choose to pay attention to. Our government has been diligently collecting data, looking at the real-world impacts around very difficult issues like prostitution to make sure that whatever path we take as we make improvements, as we continue to be committed as a feminist government

to protecting women, to protecting vulnerable sex workers, these are the things that we need to get right. And it's nice to come at it with an ideology to say, hey, we have the quick and easy solution. I think we've seen there aren't quick and easy solutions. Only a lot of work we need to do working with community members, working with interveners, working with partners to get the answers right. And that's the hard work this government has been doing for many years. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news.

So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Regardless of what the politicians decide to do, there's still the case at hand. And I wanted to ask Chief Raymer about Elora. Looking back now with a couple of years of hindsight, do you think the investigation into Laura Wells' death was adequate? No, I mean, particularly at the start. You know, we did not do this well. And it's unfortunate. I really feel for the family and what they've had to endure with the loss of a loved one. and what they've had to endure with the loss of a loved one.

So let's go back to the beginning. Toronto police get a report of a woman's body found in the Rosedale Ravine from two hikers who just sort of stumbled across it. What went into the decision not to tell the public, the media, the community? You know, why keep that information to yourself? And I have no answer for you, Justin. It was wrong. You know, the homicide squad wasn't notified as per procedure. And a public reach out particularly to that community

would have been very, very important to do and a very important step. And so these were things that were done poorly. In the weeks before I did this interview, I started piecing together what exactly police had done in Elora's case. Specifically, what did police do to look into Laura's boyfriend, Augustine's Ballastent? We know from Justice Epstein's report that the restraining order against Ballastent,

it actually ordered him to stay away from another trans woman. Epstein heard, like we did, that Ballastent was violent towards Laura, and she reported that after an unidentified body had been found, police had been given Ballestan's name as someone who they ought to talk to. But there's another line in there that makes absolutely no sense. Justice Epstein writes that, quote, Mr. Ballestan has not been located. Yet, we have his court records. We know he's been located. He's been arrested at least twice. In the village, there's a rumor that I heard when I first started working on this project. I was told that the police did interview Ballestet.

So, armed with his court records and that little bit of information, I went to the Toronto Police. In an email statement, the Toronto Police acknowledged that, in early August, they started talking to people in the ravine. The officers were told, go find Augustina's ballast dent. So police issued a BOLO, a Be On The Lookout For. But here's something that police have never admitted before now. Sometime in early August, not long after an unidentified body had been found, Augustina's ballast dent was quote, investigated as someone who may have known the person found.

An officer questions him but quote, establishes no connection between Ballastent and the found remains. I'm wondering what you can tell me about those early days of the investigation in terms of whether or not you think even just those interviews that were being done were complete enough. Yeah, there were some interviews that were done and there the people that were, you know, believed to be one of the last people that saw Laura, you know, some of the manner in which our members investigated that was problematic as well in terms of... There are so many questions about Ballestent. When he was interviewed by police when they were trying to identify the body, why didn't he mention Allora, his girlfriend who he had not seen in weeks? And when Allora was reported missing, why didn't he come forward? Or tell Michelle

or Monica that he had been interviewed after a trans woman's body had been found? It seems like he just kept this information to himself. What's more, it wouldn't be hard for police to connect Ballast End and Allura. It was pretty clear from their Facebook pages they were in a relationship. They were likely arrested together. In that email from police, they say that on December 6th, 2017, investigators filled out paperwork so that Ballast Dent could be added to a police database. That should have ensured that if police anywhere encountered him, the investigators on Alora's case would be notified.

But, and I'm quoting here, this paperwork was never processed. Some of the manner in which our members investigated that was problematic as well. It was even in terms of how paperwork was submitted, how things were put on the system. And it's just a series of mistakes. And saying it's just a series of mistakes is putting it lightly. The failure to file that paperwork meant that when Ballastent was arrested in July 2019 and June 2020, he was not questioned about Elora's death. Or as the police phrase it, no further action is taken.

None of this has ever been released publicly. In May 2021, the Toronto Police Service tells me in an email that, quote, investigators are still interested in speaking with Ballestat. We now know that Mr. Ballestat was interviewed in the days after that body was found. Is there anything in that interview that, looking back now, would indicate that Mr. Ballestat might actually be a suspect? Well, what I will say to you is that that investigation is still ongoing and is being worked on by our cold case squad at Homicide and so I'm not going to go into a lot of the details about it.

Has Augustinus Ballastent been interviewed since Allura was identified? That I'm not sure of. I know there was a couple of times that he was arrested and released and he had not been spoken to uh even as recently as uh last year you know he's not hard to find and by all indication he's still not been interviewed about this death and this isn't a problem of the initial investigators. This is a problem that's ongoing. What does that say to you? What I'm going to say to you is that that Elora Wells' death is still being investigated.

And it's being investigated by the cold case squad of the homicide unit. Let me ask you this. Do you think that Elora's case would still be outstanding, that her body would have been unidentified for this long, that a person of interest would have gone un-interviewed for this long? Do you think all of that would have happened if she were not transgender? When someone is found dead, it is a traumatic event. And I, quite frankly, have never seen

anyone, and I spent five years in the homicide squad, look at an individual and decide because of their gender or where they were born or whatever else was going to influence how we investigated that case. So I'm not so sure that that is necessarily that I agree with that at all. And I think, quite frankly, for me to do anything else would just be pure speculation. Laura was homeless. She had engaged in sex work. You know, she had used drugs. Do you think the fact that the Toronto Police Service was still, at least at that point, making some pretty determined arrests for drug use, drug possession, for sex work.

Do you think that that may have hindered the investigation into her death and the willingness by some of her friends or people who knew her to come forward? Well, you know what, I will acknowledge that we've got a long history with the communities there in the village that are problematic. And we were part of that problem going back years. So you're absolutely right. There is distrust that no doubt perhaps influenced people on whether they would come forward and have the confidence to talk to us that may have had useful evidence.

I absolutely do agree with you there that that has been the case. When you speak specifically to the Laura Wells case, there's just been some pretty shoddy police work. We may want to say that for purposes today that oh yeah that it was because you know they had something against the transgender community but quite frankly in my view it was just shoddy police work. There was an individual in that case that we would have laid charges with under the Police Act, but that individual retired, so we didn't have jurisdiction and couldn't proceed. Can you say what those charges would have been? They would have been neglected duty.

We want to make sure that Elora's family knows what we've learned. So my producer Jennifer gives her sister Michelle a call. Hello? Hi. How are you? Hey. I'm good. How are you? I'm okay. For years, Michelle has believed that Ballast Dent was in jail when Elora died. Because that's what he told her.

I would never leave her, he said in a Facebook message. I wasn't with her. As far as we can tell, and we've looked through all his court records, he was not in jail during that time. So he's in line all this time, obviously. So what the police confirmed to us is that not long after she was found, like in the two weeks, 12 days after she was found, the police did talk to him. They did talk to him. And what they tell us is that they made no connection.

Yeah. That's really, really messed up. So he actually was questioned about it, but... Oh, my God. That's crazy. That's crazy. I don't know how to feel anymore. Like, why is he so brazen and like...

So there's more. Jennifer tells Michelle that police say they're still looking for Ballast Dent. So we went to the police with this information and said, have you ever interviewed him? And they said that they were supposed to file the paperwork with CPIC, which is like the central database for police that lets police know, you know, to question somebody. And that the paperwork was not properly filed. Whoever's not doing their job, that's really horrible. Yeah, there's a lot of red flags there.

A lot. Like the fact that he's been lying this whole time, that he said that he's been in jail. And at least I'd like them to try to locate him and talk to him about the actual case and, you know, have somebody who's good at reading people, you know. Well, I'm glad that I know, you know, this, but involved in any way in Elora's death. I don't know if he was lying about being in jail or just mistaken. I know that I have tried repeatedly to get in touch with Ballastent to ask him these questions. In late June, I did get a call from a woman who says she's Ballestent's new girlfriend.

She told me that Ballestent did not want to talk. Hi, so I'm Augustinus' girlfriend. Oh, hello. Yeah, and she doesn't want to talk about it. This was probably the closest I was going to get to asking Ballestent myself. We know that over the weeks that she died, Augustinus was not in prison, like he said. So...

No, he was with me. She said she was with Ballastent when Elora died. They were having an affair, she told me. I have no idea what to make of her. Is she covering for Ballastent, telling me what I want to hear? I can't verify any of this. And really, this is a job for the cops.

And Toronto Police want to find him. They know where to find him. If Toronto Police want to find him, they know where to find him. For her whole life, the city failed Elora. The city failed her when it criminalized her again and again, picking her up on petty shoplifting charges or for prostitution.

It failed her when she had to resort to sleeping in a ravine. It failed her when she was left to lie in a morgue for months without her friends or her family knowing. And now we learn that, even in death, the city couldn't help but fail her one last time, by totally failing to speak to the man that might hold the key to explaining how she died. Allura was abandoned, but it didn't have to be this way. She didn't have to be trapped in cycles of poverty, homelessness, and criminalization. These are choices that we, as a society, make. And they are choices we could just as easily make differently.

At her funeral, they played Butterfly by Mariah Carey. It was like a butterfly funeral. Like the song Butterfly came on and everyone had a paper butterfly and stuck it on the casket. Who organized that? Uh, Monica. She did so much. Yeah, and she helped me through the whole thing and we figured it all out together. Well, I have a lot of respect for that woman. She's lovely, yeah.

Yeah. a lot of respect for that woman. She's lovely, yeah. Yeah. I did a GoFundMe page because family, because they, you know, they had no money. So we wanted to make sure she had a burial and a proper funeral. And also someone donated one of their plots. You know, I made that $10,000 in days. So there were people that really seemed to need to put her to rest in the right way.

And people missed her immensely. She was a staple in our community, just like all of us are. And she's very much missed. Her life was cut short because of circumstance. You know, and for a lot of us, this is something we see all the time. It's nothing new, but it hits home, especially when it's someone in your community that you love dearly or that you're used to seeing every day or for me at my job or at different community events. She didn't allow her misfortunes in her life

to really stop her from being the loving person she was. I keep getting drawn back there just through her spirit. I still go down there, I don't know why. Layla, her childhood friend, still visits the ravine where Elora lived, just to remember what could have been. She would have been an Instagram sensation for sure. A makeup artist, who knows? She would have been definitely a face of the LGBT for sure. If she actually recognized and believed in herself, I don't think she would have spent too much time here like this.

You know, she just had too much potential, too much talent. Like, sooner or later, she would have just found herself. Do you want to lay with them while you're waiting? Sure. Okay. Every year on November 20th, the trans community gets together to remember who they lost. In November 2020, I went to a small outdoor gathering for the Transgender Day of Remembrance. This one was being held outside a particularly queer-affirming church in the west end of the city.

On long strings tied to the signs out front are hundreds of blue and pink ribbons. This one has been done. You can go down the list. These are all people who died, typically from violence, in 2020. So we pick any name? Yeah, we're just writing their name. There are more than 400 names of trans people who have been lost in the past year around the world. This is the second one, Jesus Santos. Ruby Feria. 35 years old from Brazil.

This is a shot. Some of them are just first names, some of them are full first name some of the ripple name is even one this is unknown my name is Susan Gapka so now I'd like to read from this book trans activism in Canada it's called pause and reflect let us pause and reflect for a moment. For transphobia is a mark against humanity. My humanity. Our humanity.

For those of us who couldn't come out. For those of us who could not withstand the fear and hate. And for those of us who just had to be themselves no matter what. Let us pause and reflect for a moment. There are so many stories behind the names on those ribbons, and so many other stories in Toronto and around the world of trans people who have been lost. So Julie was a courageous community member who spoke out against discrimination and transphobia. In 2019, Julie Berman, a longtime trans activist, was killed in her home in Toronto.

What's particularly frustrating is that Julie advocated for justice for many other trans women who had faced violence and who had been failed by police. I shared a stage with Julie at the 519's Trans Day of Remembrance when she spoke passionately about her own vulnerability and experience. I had opened the vigil component with a moment of silence as the vigil host. Julie's opening words remained so poignant that she said to the audience to open, do me a favor, turn to your neighbor and tell them that you are beautiful. Julie, you are beautiful. Police have made an arrest in Julie's murder. When I sat in Allen Gardens Park with Susan, she mentioned something really briefly that I've been thinking about a lot.

One of my dreams would be to actually have an inquiry of some sort into missing and murdered, maybe we've got to use a different language, but it does cover trans people across Canada because I'd like to see our national government create some sort of mechanism for us to look at that on a national scale. Maybe that's exactly what we need. Let us pause and reflect for a moment. For people like Sean Keegan, Deanna Wilkinson, Kyle Scanlon. And now we'll add Julie Berman to the list.

In June 2018, a few months after Allura's funeral, Toronto held its annual Trans Pride March, one of the largest in the world. I came out 30 years ago. We didn't have a march. We stood on the sidelines. So it's great that we actually have a day to celebrate who we are and see the diversity of people around gender, non-binary, culture, creed. It's just beautiful.

Monica was there at the very front, wielding a bullhorn. She now runs her own advocacy group. It's called Trans Pride Toronto. We now have a drop-in starting next month. We hired people in the community to be helpers. So we're empowering people to give them skills. We're creating more spaces. We have an online support group during COVID,

which has been really great. It's really given me this energy to really be the first ever trans-run agency in Toronto. Laura Rouse has really kind of stuck fire up my ass to really push me to really make change. And her death has really driven me to really push for more accessible spaces run by trans people.

Not what cisgender people or queer people think that we need. We need spaces that really empower people, advocate and push people and support people and get them housed and do what we need to do to support them in their lives. Nikki Ward was there too. I've been here since 2009 when we weren't allowed to be here. You couldn't keep me away even when they were trying to. And now they actually want us here. Isn't that amazing? The Toronto Police Service had been disinvited from the parade altogether.

We have this big beautiful banner that says Queers Imagine a Future Without Policing. We are here to ask queers and trans folks and all of our friends to imagine a world without police and a society where we can think about other ways of making justice together that are informed by our queer and trans expertise and lives. In the crowd are activists young and old. There are a ton of kids. A sea of white, blue and pink flags.

More than a thousand members of the community came out. The sea of people stretches for blocks and blocks. Pride at its core was a marriage of protest and celebration. Today was about celebration. Of a community determined to look after itself. Queer newspaper Extra was there to document the scene. I just kind of wanted to meet other people like me and there's not many people in my community back home,

so it's just nice to be here. I'm out today because I am celebrating my transness as a non-binary two-spirit. I think we all deserve to have community without borders, education, health and rights, human rights. Because we need to celebrate who we are, we need to reclaim our spaces so we are proud of who we are out and loud and here. In our countries this doesn't really exist. So to be able to see all these people support who we are and be proud of ourselves is just amazing. We're here! We're queer! We're fabulous! We don't fuck with us! My name is Katie and I'm from South Korea.

And I just came here 10 months ago. And this pride is the biggest reason I choose to come to Canada. It feels so free and I feel like I'm myself. My name's Kazdin, aka Quinn. That's my drag persona. And I'm just this big ol' queerdan, aka Quinn, that's my drag persona. And I'm just this big ol' queer, non-binary alien that came out tonight. Trans people have a right to exist, and they have a right to be exactly who they are. They have a right to love, they have a right to jobs, they have a right to security, they have a right to healthcare.

People die every day for being trans on this planet, and it needs to stop. Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Transphobia, let's go! I'm originally from Barbados. I came here to Canada so that I can live my life free of judgment and prejudice.

As a visible minority and trans woman, it's important for me to be here in the mix of things, carrying on with the activism that is necessary to move the trans community forward. At the front of the march, right next to Monica, someone is carrying a big handwritten sign that says, Justice for Allura. Every day, we all should be celebrating our bodies, our choices, who we are. We should be free to express who we are, love who we are, Justin Ling, and Jennifer Fowler. Sound design was by Julia Whitman with help from Evan Kelly.

Our associate producer is Eunice Kim, and our digital producer is Fabiola Melendez-Carletti. Thank you to Extra for the audio of the 2018 Promo producer is Amanda Cox. Special thanks to Natalia Ferguson and Kate Zeman at the CBC Reference Library. Thank you to Extra for the audio of the 2018 Trans Pride March. Thanks as well to the Archives, Canada's LGBTQ Archives. The executive producer of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorani, and our senior director is Leslie Merklinger. If you haven't listened yet, please go back and listen to The Village Season 1, my investigation into serial killer Bruce MacArthur and the spate of unsolved murders from The Village

dating back to the 70s. All nine episodes are available now on the CBC Listen app or wherever youca slash podcasts.