Reena: A Father's Story

REENA

A FATHER’S STORY

Manjit Virk

This book is dedicated to all families

On a November night in 1997, along a waterway known as the Gorge in Victoria, British Columbia, 14-year-old Reena Virk was swarmed and beaten by a group of teenaged girls and a lone male, then later beaten and drowned by two teens from the same group. The tragedy became a news item internationally. It was a new low in the bad girls syndrome that seemed to be engulfing North America. At least six trials spread over seven years have kept the story in the public eye and raised awareness of the victim, the attackers and a social-services system that failed both the dead girl and her family.

The Gorge has been a part of the community since Victoria was established as a Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) fort in the 1850s. Victoria, situated at the south end of Vancouver Island, is considered one of the most charming and tranquil ports in the world. It is a small city, capital of the province, with the majestic Empress Hotel and the lofty legislative buildings framing a well-protected inner harbour. Much of the year the harbour bustles with activity—seaplanes, ferries, pleasure craft and workboats all make ample use of these waters. At the north end of the harbour, a uniquely designed bright blue drawbridge rises regularly to let workboats and masted craft enter the Gorge.

The HBC established Craigflower Farm about two miles up the inlet at a strategic location that allowed for easy transport of crops to the fort. Over time, as the city grew, homes and parks came to dot the Gorge shoreline, while small shipyards and other industries claimed lands closer to the harbour. The place where Reena was killed looks much the same now as it did then. It is marked by the Craigflower bridge, not far from the original farm manor and next to a green space where the original 1858 Craigflower school is now a protected heritage building. The bridge road is a well-travelled thoroughfare, and no doubt many local residents must have wondered if they crossed it on that fateful Friday night.

The school Reena’s attackers attended, Shoreline Secondary, sits on a slope just up the road from the Craigflower bridge. It was on the school’s playing field that the fate of Reena Virk began to unfold. Fighting with fists and feet, pulling hair, scratching faces, swarming and bullying were all in vogue with bad girls, so it would be nothing out of the ordinary to the teens in the halls of Shoreline Secondary when word spread earlier in the week that an unknown girl was going to get what she deserved on Friday night.

It is an accepted fact that Reena was lured to the Shoreline field by her so-called friends, who claimed she had been spreading rumours and attempting to steal the boyfriend of one of the girls. They intended to exact revenge. According to one account, a local tough had been recruited to fight Reena in the schoolyard, and when she arrived and announced her mission, Reena sensed danger and started to retreat homeward. But somehow they all ended up under the nearby bridge, a group of eight assailants and a second group of observers close at hand.

When Reena didn’t come home that night, her parents phoned the Saanich police. They phoned again the next morning, but they were told that because of Reena’s history, there would not be a formalized search until Monday. But her mother, Suman, sensed that something had happened to Reena. Despite her rebelliousness, Reena had always called home, and the night of November 14 was no exception: she had called at 9:45 p.m. and told her brother, Aman, that she was headed home. I had a horrible feeling, Suman said later. Something was wrong.

By the following Friday, eight teens ranging in age from 14 to 16 were in custody; they had confirmed authorities’ worst fears. On Saturday, November 22, a helicopter search of the Gorge located a body. It was Reena. The lives of Manjit Virk, his wife, Suman, and their two surviving children had changed forever.

CONTENTS

Prologue

In the Beginning

A Proud Heritage

Making My Way

Canada, Land of Plenty

A Struggle for Balance

Growing Pains

Trouble and Shock

The Final Night

More Harrowing News

All Our Trials

The Agony of Appeal

The Ministry and the Fatality Review Report

Metamorphosis

Aftermath

Epilogue

Timeline of Events

Family Tree

Reena gave this poem, written shortly before her 11th birthday, to one of her teachers at McKenzie Elementary School.

PROLOGUE

Manjit Virk opens the door to his house with a bird perched upon his left forefinger. The bird is Smooch, the peach-faced African lovebird that the Virk family rescued from the Victoria SPCA in the summer of 1996. Smooch was just three months old, upset and wild, when he became Reena Virk’s pet. Reena was 13 that summer and having a bit of trouble settling down herself.

Smooch, a.k.a. Smoochy, has outlived his young mistress, and now is Manjit’s last tie with his murdered daughter. When I look at the bird, I note that it is moulting: it is a bedraggled yet beloved family pet—and a father’s last physical connection to a dead, cherished child. I wonder what new phase of grief the Virks, especially Manjit, will reach when Smoochy dies. Manjit himself broaches the subject when he observes that birds of this type usually live to be about 14 years old—and Smooch himself is 12.

Do parents ever fully realize the family of their dreams? Does any father have the whole picture about what goes on in his family, about his children’s secret hopes, desires and disappointments? Likely not, even though a parent, especially a father, is supposed to understand and protect his children forever. And can any family story ever be told in a straight line with total accuracy? Again, likely not. But when a family has been torn asunder by unspeakable tragedy, the tracking of family history becomes even more difficult and fraught. Over the past year, Manjit has struggled to write his memoir, to tell the story of an average family that has never been the same—and yet has struggled for normalcy—ever since its eldest child was swarmed and killed by her peers on a moonlit night, November 14, 1997.

As an editor, it has been my task to help Manjit tell that story, to respect and honour his voice, yet to find a way to untangle the narrative so that readers can understand what sudden and horrific violence can do to a family and how a family somehow remains intact in the face of such events.

As we discuss the manuscript on this hot Friday afternoon in May—one of the few warm days we have had in this most reluctant spring of 2008—I am aware that Fridays can never be neutral days in the Virk household because Reena was killed on a Friday. As we talk, Smoochy burrows under the collar of Mr. Virk’s shirt and remains there after Suman Virk joins us following an afternoon outing. Smoochy remains firmly ensconced even as Mr. Virk serves us chai and Peek Frean cookies. Suman has long accepted the bond between her husband and the bird, even though she occasionally remarks upon it sardonically and calls Smooch birdbrain.

The Virks have lived in the same house on Irma Street since 1994. This is the house they moved to in the hope of a better, more harmonious family life. This is the home in which they first learned of Reena’s death, and the place once crowded with shocked family and friends a week after Reena’s murder, the weekend her body was found. With its split-level floor plan and its balconies front and back, architects might call the house a Vancouver Special. Family pictures—including many of Reena—line the credenza in the family room, and the floral-printed furniture is comfortable and much inhabited. Reena’s younger sister still lives at home, in her own quarters downstairs, but her brother, married now, has moved to his own place.

This is the home where Reena would have posed for photographs, wearing a filmy dress for her high school graduation. This is where her family would have gathered to celebrate her rites of passage as a young adult, perhaps, by now, even to celebrate her marriage. As we sit and sip our chai, I realize that if Reena were here with us today, she would be a young woman of 25, a statuesque young woman, I imagine, who would have grown into her own exotic beauty and who would hold Smoochy on her own finger as she joked with her mother and father.

This memoir is the book Manjit Virk was able to write after a decade of mourning his daughter. It is a book about what was and what was not, about his immigration to a new land and his attempts to raise his family in a safe and simple fashion, about the events that forever derailed those efforts. On the very day that this book went to press, Manjit and Suman learned that the BC Court of Appeal had granted Kelly Ellard a fourth murder trial. This is Manjit’s story, the story of a father’s hope and courage, his grief and pain and anger, but it is also the story of Reena, his beloved first child.

Lynne Van Luven

September 2008

CHAPTER ONE

In the Beginning

On an April afternoon in 1979, from my seat aboard a Pacific Western plane, I glanced down upon a vast blue ocean, shimmering in the afternoon sun. As the plane tilted, I glimpsed a miniature city, beautifully arranged and sectioned off with tidy streets. City of my dreams: Victoria, British Columbia. My long journey started in New Delhi, India. With a short layover in London, England, then on to Seattle, Washington, it was 18 hours’ flying time before I finally stepped off the plane in Victoria into surprisingly crisp air. I was amazed at the small size and the quiet of the Victoria International Airport. I arrived to the embrace of my older sister, Amarjit, and her family. How wonderful to see her again, and to meet her two boys, two years and six months old.

The previous autumn, Amarjit, who had been living on Vancouver Island for two years, had sent me a magazine called Beautiful British Columbia. The articles inside showed perfection: rocks that looked freshly washed, meticulously clean streets with trees blossoming in springtime splendour. When I asked if such a place really existed, she encouraged me to come for a visit. Looking back, I realize that, as a young man of 22, I was both naïve and adventurous, eager for new vistas yet not really knowing what I would encounter.

I had been working for Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd., a successful New Delhi pharmaceutical firm, for two years. What if you don’t come back? my manager joked as he granted me my 60-day leave of absence.

Victoria at that time was a small, even provincial, city in spite of being the province’s capital, but I was enchanted. I stored my suitcase in the basement of my sister and brother-in-law’s two-bedroom house and squeezed a mattress into the boys’ room. Very quickly, I settled into a routine. My nephews and I spent a good deal of time in Rutledge Park, adjacent to the family’s house. Other times, we visited Beacon Hill Park downtown just off Dallas Road, where we fed the ducks and took pictures. I told scary stories to my eldest nephew, Rav, who loved to crawl into my bed at night. After breakfast, we often played in the park or went to the nearby Mayfair mall to see toys in the Woodward’s department store. As a treat, the boys often had ice cream cones, and then we walked home for lunch.

Even though my sister was a stay-at-home mom, my nephews stuck to me like burrs to a pant leg, and I rarely had time alone. As a single guy, I was unaccustomed to the intensity of children’s attention. Sometimes I needed a bit of quiet time, which I usually found by sneaking out to Topaz Park, where I sat on the freshly cut grass in the sunshine.

During those early days of my visit, I missed India, its social life and the bustling market where I had routinely strolled in the evenings. I had gone from the midst of my homeland with an exploding population of 800 million people to a country with fewer than 25 million. Despite the refreshing quiet of Victoria, something was missing: I did not feel much warmth in the people I saw on the streets. And I was amazed by the carefree lifestyle of single mothers, blended families and people who spoke of ex-husbands and former wives. In India, I was used to intact extended families: mother, father, children and often grandparents, all together, always. In Canada, my sister had to travel, sometimes as