Highway of Tears

Jessica McDiarmid

For decades, Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or been found murdered along an isolated stretch of highway in northwestern British Columbia. The corridor is known as the Highway of Tears, and it has come to symbolize a national crisis.

Journalist Jessica McDiarmid meticulously investigates the devastating effect these tragedies have had on the families of the victims and their communities, and how systemic racism and indifference have created a climate in which Indigenous women and girls are overpoliced yet underprotected. McDiarmid interviews those closest to the victims’ mothers, fathers, siblings and friends and provides an intimate firsthand account of their loss and unflagging fight for justice. Examining the historically fraught social and cultural tensions between settlers and Indigenous peoples in the region, McDiarmid links these cases to others across Canada and now estimated to number up to four thousand; contextualizing them within a broader examination of the undervaluing of Indigenous lives in the country. 

Highway of Tears is a piercing exploration of our ongoing failure to provide justice for the victims and a testament to their families and communities unwavering determination to find it.