MONTREAL – Twelve years, one month, and one day after she went missing, a little girl was finally laid to rest Friday.
Jolene Riendeau’s friends and family gathered inside a Montreal church for her funeral, which was held following an announcement that police had found her body. Her mother closed the funeral with a moving, powerful address.
She promised that she would honour the memory of her daughter by becoming a vocal fighter for missing children and their families.
“I will be the No. 1 militant,” Dolores Soucy pledged. “Jolene, mommy will always be there.”
The disappearance of the 10-year-old after she went to a convenience store in a working-class Montreal neighbourhood in 1999 sparked national headlines and a massive police search.
Her remains were found by police in September 2010 but they didn’t alert Riendeau’s family until last week because of their investigation.
Hundreds of people, many with young children, filled the pews of the church for the ceremony in Montreal’s Pointe-St-Charles neighbourhood.
Get daily National news
The family wanted the funeral held in the neighbourhood where Jolene grew up; they moved away after the disappearance.
They reportedly even asked that priest who presided over many of the family’s religious rites – including Jolene’s baptism, her communion, and the wedding of her parents – return to the parish to preside over the funeral.
Outside, before the service, dozens of curious citizens stood on a sidewalk across the street and watched as family and friends arrived.
Among them was Jessica Riendeau, the girl’s cousin.
Every year in April, ever since Jolene vanished, Jessica would pen letters filled with personal thoughts to her.
She always wrote that she wished she’d come home.
They last saw each other a couple of months before the disappearance.
The girls were playing with Lego in Jessica’s bedroom in the town of Acton Vale, Que.
“She always had a beautiful smile,” she said before heading into the Roman Catholic church for the funeral.
Jessica says she has thought about Jolene every day over the past 12 years.
“It was very hard – it was a shock to find out,” she said about the discovery of Jolene’s remains.
Police detained a man in the case shortly after they announced the recovery of the body but later released him.
After the funeral, the family is expected to release a flock of doves in her memory.
Comments