Mona Lee Wilson was born on January 13, 1975 and was originally from the O'Chiese First Nation in Alberta.
Foster brother Greg Garley recalls "I remember her smile, I remember what a great girl she was,"Garley says. "She would have been a great wife and a great mother, she had true love in her heart."
Between the ages of eight and 14, she lived on the Garleys' hobby farm in Surrey, B.C. When she got to the farm, instead of being a target, she became a helper, racing after her foster mother, tugging on rain boots as she ran to help tend the garden or feed the chickens.
When the family took a trip to Disneyland, he remembers Wilson's big eyes lighting up at the sight of rides and her favourite cotton candy. "She went on billions of rides, she loved stuff like that, the fast ones," he says. " We'd all feel sick getting on those kinds of rides but she just thought it was great.
What's going to happen to her? She's got her big brother with her." When the Garley family went to church, as they did on many Sundays, Wilson would go along. She liked being able to hang around with other kids her age, but hated the wardrobe. "Oh boy, did she not like wearing dresses," says Garley. After much cajoling, she'd consent to the ribbons and finery but not without a fight. "Don't make me mad," was her signature phrase, Garley says, and she'd invoke it each time there was a struggle, her eyes narrowing, her brow furrowed and a massive frown crossing her face. Despite the early aversion to dresses, she played with Barbies and loved to roam the aisles at Toys R Us, where she and Garley would have Silly String fights.
The transition from child to woman was the first time Garley said he saw Wilson break down about the violence she experienced as a child. Though the women in the Garley house had talked to her about what would happen once she got her period, the day it came, shrieks reverberated around the house, followed by sobs that lasted the whole day. "She thought she was bleeding to death I guess, like when this man was raping her as a child," Garley says. "She didn't want to be a woman, she wanted to stay a kid." But a woman she became, now trading jeans for skirts and swiping her sisters' make-up."I remember when she got caught in the bathroom trying to put on lipstick,"he says. "Her lips were about three, four inches wide, she looked hilarious." She loved the colour pink and years later would be remembered by a teacher for her signature hot-pink lipstick.
After six years of being one of the family, Wilson was moved from the Garleys and placed with a single mother who had a 14-year-old son, Garley says. From there, she moved to the east end of Vancouver, where she was living on her own at the age of 16. What was left of her childhood ended when she left the Garleys. The stories of love ended there, too.
