Maggie de Vries’ Missing Sarah is a sensitively realized auto/biographical account of her sister’s life that traces both of their narratives from a shared childhood in West Point Grey to Sarah’s experience of the downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Maggie’s work is a memoir, a series of stories embedded in text, which serve to commemorate Sarah’s life narrative, at once humanizing and criticizing. Maggie states her motivations for writing Missing Sarah in her Prologue:

“I am writing this book to make it real for myself, to gather all that has passed in the last four years and pin it to the page. I am getting to know Sarah better now that she is dead than I did when she was alive” (xv).

Here, we can see some exigencies for Maggie to write out Sarah’s story – catharsis and a desire to get to know Sarah, even after her death. I see Missing Sarah as Maggie’s written recreation of the past, a textual memory. While this format serves to educate readers of Sarah’s life, especially her life before her experiences in the DTES, a narrative rarely told, it still remains on the page, unable to transcend the physical boundaries of text. Readers must invite themselves into Maggie and Sarah’s story.

In contrast, the Women’s Memorial March that occurred today can be seen as a type of living memory that is publicly seen and heard, able to present a human face in remembrance of missing ones. In an article from the Georgia Straight, Maggie de Vries elaborates on the importance of the March for remembering and what it may have meant for those who were lost (and families who have experienced loss):

“A lot of them didn’t think they’d be remembered… I don’t think any of them thought they would be remembered at all.”

Maggie’s statement highlights the absolute need to continue actively remembering, and living through memory, as many of the missing women were not/are not seen in society’s eyes as worthy of such remembrance. Marlene George, an organizer of the March states, “we’re speaking for the women that cannot speak, that are missing and murdered, the ones that have no voice now.” Through the physical act of marching, these women participate in an act of living memory, visibly showing their continuing search for answers. On the March, as was mentioned in class, participants leave roses, medicine and say prayers at the various locations each missing woman was last seen. Through this process, memory is kept alive, as is the momentum and motivation to keep pursuing, pushing for and demanding answers. And change. Both Maggie’s Missing Sarah and the March participate in this crucial process and form a living, breathing space to remember and ask.