Wassaykeesic still looking into mother’s death

Mishkeegogamang’s Gary Wassaykeesic has been making some progress in his search into the 1976 death of his mother Sophie Wassaykeesic.
“Right now it’s kind of important to either add some publicity to it or add pressure to this investigation,” said the construction worker who has lived in Toronto for about 17 years.
In an effort to gain more publicity about the issue, Wassaykeesic has shared his mother’s story with other media in the Toronto-area.
Wassaykeesic said while his mother’s death was recorded as a death by suffocation, due to alcohol, he believes there was more to her death than what was recorded, suggesting she may have been murdered.
He said he has talked to people who said they heard “a lot of banging” at the time she died.
Wassaykeesic has always wanted to find out what happened to his mother since he found out about her death about six months after she died.
“I was in residential school when it happened,” Wassaykeesic said. “I had to find out on my own.
“When I did find out, they didn’t tell me the details either. They just informed me that my mother was dead.”
Wassaykeesic began looking into her death more seriously after the residential school settlement was announced. He said the details will help with the psychological damages claim he is pursuing for not being told for six months that his mother had died.
Wassaykeesic said one of the major problems in his investigation is that the Ontario Provincial Police’s Central Patricia detachment burned down years ago along with all the information on his mother’s death.
Wassaykeesic recently met with an Ontario Provincial Police detective from the North West Region in Toronto about his mother’s death.
“It went alright, but I really wasn’t satisfied with it because we had the meeting at the (Toronto) Reference Library at Bloor and Yonge,” Wassaykeesic said.
“It was sort of a public place and you couldn’t really get right into it.”
While the location was not ideal, Wassaykeesic said he and his brother did have an opportunity to talk to the detective about their mother’s death.
“Each of us gave an interview,” Wassaykeesic said. “My brother was there that night (when his mother died), so he was able to give his version of what happened that night.”
Wassaykeesic said the detective told him and his brother she would take their information to her superiors and would get back to him within a week.
“They are going to review it and then they are going to call back,” Wassaykeesic said. “From that point on they will see if there is an investigation.”
OPP Det. Staff Sgt. Mark Hutchinson said the case came to the OPP through the coroner’s office.
“We are now following up on some of the information that Gary has provided,” Hutchinson said, explaining the officers initially involved in the case have retired.
“We are going to provide a report to the coroner’s office and then the coroner will make a determination if there is anything further they can do from their end.”
Hutchinson said the investigation is on-going.
“There are names that have come from Gary that we will conduct some follow up on and we will take the investigation where that information leads us,” Hutchinson said.
Wassaykeesic said he also talked with New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton and Timmins-James Bay MP Charlie Angus about his mother’s death as well as with members of the Green Party.
“I was able to give them information on my mother and how far I have gotten with it, up to detective level,” he said.
Wassaykeesic has been working with Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto to obtain more details in the case, including information on the police report into his mother’s death.
“We’re going through the Freedom of Information Act right now with Aboriginal Legal Services to obtain that police report,” Wassaykeesic said. “We want to find out who signed it, so that’s the point we are at right now.”
Wassaykeesic said he also contacted the National Anti-Racism Council of Canada about the case.