‘She was more than what happened to her’: Family honours memory of Rebecca Contois – Winnipeg

As she walks throughout St. John’s Park, nestled between the shores of the Red River and Winnipeg’s Main Street, Stephanie Contois remembers her sister Rebecca.

“She loved going for walks. She loved the outdoors; she didn’t really want to be in all the time,” Stephanie told Global News.

“And I’m always thinking, like, if she was the kind of person that liked being inside all the time, maybe she would still be here.”

“She thought she was safe, but she wasn’t.”

In the centre of the park stands a Rainbow Butterfly monument, meant to be a permanent symbol of love and peace and protection for Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people.

“We usually like coming here because it reminds us of my sister, Rebecca, because we like to think of her as a butterfly, because they’re beautiful and they’re free,” Stephanie said.

“We miss her so much. There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t think of her,” she added. “I always wondered what my life would be like if she was still here.”

In May 2022, Rebecca Contois, 24, was the first discovered victim of serial killer Jeremy Skibicki.

“I feel like time is going on, you know. I never really had the chance to talk about Rebecca, about who she was and all that, because people only know the awful stuff,” she said.

“They only know what they hear on media or YouTube, like what happened to her, like she was in a bin or she was dismembered … words like that. They only see her as that. She wasn’t a piece of garbage.”

Remembering Rebecca

Stephanie remembers her sister as outgoing, a bright light who loved art, the outdoors and her family. She says Rebecca was a mother, daughter, sister, friend and a member of Crane River First Nation.

“Rebecca was very adventurous. She was down to earth. She always had her hair really long. It was long and dark and she always had it pushed to the side all the time,” she recalled.

“She was always wanting to dance with some of my family members. I have a sister who has a disability, and I would see them playing that game ‘Just Dance,’ just laughing and having a good time.”

Stephanie says her sister was hopeful about the future.

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“She was working on getting some of her stuff together at the time. She was telling me she wanted to go back to school. She wanted to do something with her life because at the time she was kind of hanging around with, I don’t know, I guess they were not the right kind of people to be hanging around with,” Stephanie said.

“But at that point, we didn’t really judge her on it, on her lifestyle, because she had her home (with us) and would come back and forth to where she was going. She just loved to travel the city and go on bus rides, and I guess she met the wrong person.”

May 2022

Stephanie remembers the last time she saw her sister in May 2022.

“That was on my little sister Maxine’s birthday. She was at our house for two days.” Stephanie recalled her sister saying she’d be back later for the party. “And then she never came back.”

Two days later, Winnipeg police officers knocked on the family’s door.

“They told me they found her deceased by a bin — a garbage bin. And then at that point, I just went running upstairs. I was in shock. I didn’t even say anything to the detectives.”

Stephanie says details came out slowly.

“Even after (police) said it was a homicide, too, I still didn’t know all the details,” she said. “I was looking online and I had seen by the media that there was a really bad headline, and that’s when I found out about the separation of my sister. It was a headline like that.”

Rebecca’s partial remains were discovered in a dumpster on Edison Avenue on May 16, 2022. Days later, Winnipeg police arrested Jeremy Skibicki and charged him with first-degree murder in her death. Stephanie says Rebecca had never mentioned Skibicki to the family.

“They probably didn’t know each other for a long time. But she was trying to set up a place with him and all that, like be on the lease and stuff,” Stephanie said. “Because that’s the kind of person she was. She was really trusting in people because she didn’t see the bad (in) people.”

In June 2022, the rest of Rebecca’s remains were discovered in the Brady Road landfill. Months later, in December 2022, Skibicki was charged with three more counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran, and Ashlee Shingoose, whose identity was unknown at the time.

In July 2024, Court of King’s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal found Skibicki guilty on all four counts. He was later sentenced to four concurrent life sentences with no chance of parole for 25 years.

Impact of the case, calls for change

The case triggered reverberating calls across the country to search the Prairie Green landfill, where the remains of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran were believed to be. Searchers found their remains last year, while a search of the Brady Road landfill for Ashlee Shingoose is ongoing. Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew has also pledged to search that landfill for Tanya Nepinak, who is believed to have been murdered in 2011.

“It was an immediate call to action that we had to step this up and we had to fight harder,” said Travis Barsy, a MMIWG2S [Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirited Individuals] advocate who has previously spoken publicly on behalf of the Contois family.

Barsy says Canada is significantly behind when it comes to implementing the 231 calls for justice in the final report of the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls.

“I think what Canada, as a whole, has done a very good job of is pulling the veil over the rest of the world’s eyes to what is actually happening here,” Barsy said. “And so it is important that we come together as First Nations, Inuit and Métis people, and hold the government accountable in a legal way to their lack of action.”

Isabel Daniels, a MMIWG2S advocate, says more supports need to be in place to keep Indigenous women safe.

“I’m also a MMIWG family member. My niece, Nicole Daniels, was taken in 2009. And as much as we need supports as families, it’s our women who are struggling. They really need that advocacy because every day they’re getting raped, every day they are getting beaten, every day they’re given hot shots, and every day it just becomes less and less safe,” Daniels said.

“You know, if there was a 24-7 safe place in this province or in this city … maybe we could have saved some lives.”

Speaking publicly

Stephanie has never spoken publicly about her sister, but now wants to honour her memory to ensure Rebecca is remembered for who she was and not what happened to her, she says.

“It’s healing talking about her,” she said.

“Oftentimes, our women get clouded by their death and nobody ever takes the time to really get to know who they were when they walked on this earth,” Daniels said.

“The family needs to, we all need to move on from grief. And I think that Steph and the rest of the Contois family are ready to celebrate her life now.”

Barsy says it’s important to keep memories of the victims alive.

“It is important that they are not forgotten. It is important that people know that they’re human beings and that they were loved,” Barsy said.

“And the important part for me was to remind people that if it wasn’t for Rebecca, because she was the first person found … we may still not know what happened to these women.”

“I want my sister Rebecca to be remembered as a loving, beautiful soul who brought light into the lives of everyone around her,” Stephanie said.

“She was more than what happened to her. I would describe her as an angel who made us see the world differently.”