This afternoon I was out in the woods with my dog.
I was noticing that the mud is starting to freeze up, and that my footprints were neither so deep nor so clear as they were a couple of days ago.
I think about footprints a great deal.
I think about them because of Cody Legebokoff.
I was the court artist during the trial of the 24-year-old Legebokoff. I was not present in the courtroom every day; indeed the sum total of my time in court was three days over the course of the spring and summer.
I did not see the evidence the jury had to see. I was not subjected to the testimony of endless witnesses, the grueling catalogue of lies and revisions.
I was seated, at the beginning, among the families, as that was the only vantage point from which I could catch an occasional glimpse of the face of the accused, seated, as he was, in the prisoner box with his back to the gallery.
At that time, Loren Leslie's grandparents sat behind me. At the end of the second day, they approached me. They thanked me for what I was doing.
It seemed obscene to me, somehow; I couldn't imagine how my presence, a stranger's presence could be in any way helpful; how my drawings could even approach the grief they face, will continue to face for the rest of their lives. I was paid to be there. I could distance myself from the horror of the thing because I was occupied with drawing it.
That night, driving back home, I pulled over and threw up.
Two weeks ago, when I was last in the courtroom, seated with the press this time, Legebokoff took the stand in his own defense.
It had been several weeks since I had last been present. He seemed keener, sharper, than the round faced young man I'd seen before.
He had the unpleasant habit of laughing whenever he was caught in a lie, and the Crown's cross examination was punctuated with that brittle sound and the tight, chilling smile that accompanied it.
He discussed meeting 15-year-old Loren Leslie at her school; he said she was sitting on a swing waiting for him. It is not my place to discuss what he did to that little girl, nor to his other victims: Cynthia Maas, Jill Stuchenko and Natasha Montgomery. It is a story that has been told again and again, and it is not mine to repeat, nor do I wish to.
The reason I'm writing now is this: when I entered the courtroom the last day, I opened my sketch book and found a drawing done for me by my daughter. A pony in a green field under blue sky.
A picture full of such love and joy that it would make you laugh out loud to see it. I saw that picture and my heart stopped.
I felt as though I'd brought my own baby girl, my bright brave nine-year-old child, into that room with that man; into that room with all the terrible things he did.
I felt desperate to protect her.
And then I realized, all at once, this is what Loren's grandparents meant when they thanked me. They meant, thank you for witnessing this. Thank you for seeing it.
I brought my child, my children into that room, just as every parent would. Because you can't not. Those girls he killed, they belonged to families.
They belonged to life.
I will never walk in the woods again without thinking of little Loren Leslie.
I will never forget the terror in her last running footprints, nor the conservation officer who so carefully followed them.
I brought my child into the room, unwittingly, and I realized that that child could have been my own. Could have been yours.
That in those darkest places, every lost child is your child.
The lawyers who tried the case, the judge, the press who wrote the unwriteable things and, above all, the members of the jury who gave up home and work and the solace of family to sit for week after harrowing week with things they'll never be able to forget... to them we all owe our gratitude.
They have done a remarkable thing.
They have waded through the bureaucratic mire of the justice system, they have looked evil in the eye and they have seen it for what it is.
They have witnessed the deaths of these four women and they've honoured their lives.
On behalf of my own four children, I thank them.
Corey Hardeman was last year's Prince George Community Arts Council artist-in-residence. Earlier this year, she competed in the national Art Battle in Toronto after winning the provincial competition. Her sketches of the Cody Legebokoff trial for The Citizen were distributed nationally by the Canadian Press.
