Stephanie English steps onto Hwy Two near her home community of Piikani First Nation in southern Alberta.

Despite a heavy snowfall causing low visibility, she begins to walk.

She will be walking for roughly 40 hours, 200 kilometers north to Calgary.

It’s something she had planned to do with her two daughters, Alison Moses and Joey English.

But she walks alone.

“My girls and I have been through hard times in this kind of weather,” English said as she made her way down the highway, “Just kind of going back on the memories and what we were supposed to do together. But we’re still doing it together.”

She lost Alison to suicide in 2015. A year later, Joey’s body was found dismembered and scattered across Calgary.

According to the Medical Examiner, she died of an overdose before her body was dismembered.

Joshua Weise was sentenced to 18 months behind bars plus three years’ probation for offering an indignity to human remains.

“I walk because my daughter is still buried in a landfill. I walk because I grieve really hard.

“This is something we wanted to do for some time now.”

English says starting the walk in Piikani brings Indigenous issues off reserve and into the public.

“I just hope for change.

“If we can only one day work together and become a stronger nation, I really believe that a lot of good change will come in.”

English will keep walking non-stop until she reaches Calgary on Thursday where she will unite with the annual Sisters in Spirit Vigil, which is held across Canada to honour missing and murdered Indigenous women.

Tamara Pimentel Video Journalist / Calgary Tamara is Métis from Winnipeg, Manitoba. She received a diploma in interactive media arts at Assiniboine Community College in Brandon and has worked as a videographer for CBC in Winnipeg and Iqaluit. Tamara was hired by APTN in 2016 as a camera/editor and is now a video journalist in our Calgary bureau.

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