Highway of Tears

The Highway of Tears refers to a 719-kilometre (447 mi) corridor of Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert, British Columbia, associated with crimes against many women since the highway's completion in 1969. The name was coined in 1998 during a vigil in Terrace, B.C., by Florence Naziel, referring to the grief of victims' families. A disproportionate number of the victims are Indigenous women, linking the cases to the broader Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement. Proposed factors contributing to the toleration of these crimes and the limited progress in solving them include poverty, drug abuse, domestic violence, disruption of family and cultural ties through the foster care system and residential schools, lack of public transportation leading to reliance on hitchhiking, and the remote, isolated character of the region.

Accounts of the number of victims vary. The RCMP's Project E-Pana lists fewer than 18 cases meeting its criteria, while Indigenous organizations estimate the number of missing and murdered women along the highway to be higher than 40. The first RCMP investigation attempting to link cases along the highway began in December 1998; that early list also included three male victims. A number of people have since been convicted in cases connected to the Highway of Tears, including three men identified as serial killers: Brian Peter Arp, Edward Dennis Isaac, and Cody Legebokoff. Bobby Jack Fowler, an American man implicated in other E-Pana cases outside the Highway of Tears, was never charged in connection with any Highway of Tears victim and died in prison; a former Vancouver police geographic profiler stated his opinion that Fowler was not responsible for crimes along Highway 16 between 1989 and 2006.

Project E-Pana, launched by the RCMP in 2005, examined unsolved murders and disappearances of women and girls along Highway 16 and connecting highways to determine whether a single serial killer or multiple offenders were responsible. Its caseload and funding fluctuated over time, and by 2014 the number of officers assigned had dropped sharply from previous years. In 2014, murder charges were brought against a man for the 1978 death of 12-year-old Monica Jack; he was later found guilty by a jury and sentenced to life in prison in early 2019, marking the first E-Pana file to be resolved through a full court process.

A separate controversy emerged concerning government records: in October 2015, British Columbia's Information and Privacy Commissioner published a report finding that a ministerial assistant had "triple deleted" emails relating to the Highway of Tears in response to a freedom-of-information request, in breach of provincial privacy law. The ministerial assistant resigned and was later convicted of lying to the privacy commissioner, receiving a fine.

Critics, including Indigenous activists, have argued that systemic racism contributed to limited media coverage and slower investigative response for Indigenous victims compared to non-Indigenous victims such as Nicole Hoar, whose 2002 disappearance received comparatively significant media attention. Recommendation reports arising from a 2006 symposium and a 2012 government inquiry called for improved public transportation and other measures; a subsidized bus service began operating along part of the highway in 2017, and expanded cellular coverage was installed along a remaining stretch in December 2024.