This is Highway 16. They call it the Highway of Tears.

On June 11th, 1994, 16 -year -old Ramona Wilson

vanished in the remote town of Smithers, British

Columbia, leaving her mother, Matilda, waiting

by a silent telephone as the darkness swallowed

the edges of Highway 16. That ribbon of asphalt,

winding through the dense pine forests and river

valleys of the Canadian wilderness, would soon

cement its reputation as the Highway of Tears.

Ramona was the youngest of six children. She

was a teenager who had just been hired as a peer

counselor for the local community service center.

She was ecstatic about the job. She possessed

a contagious laugh, a bright spirit, and an entire

life mapped out ahead of her. On that Saturday,

she planned to meet friends. But in Smithers

and across the vast stretches of northern British

Columbia, public transit was practically nonexistent.

There were no buses running between the scattered

towns and indigenous reserves to get anywhere.

People walked along the gravel shoulders where

they held out a thumb. Ramona stepped out into

the June air and she never came home. For 10

agonizing months, Matilda Wilson lived in a state

of suspended animation. Every passing car on

the highway outside town held a ghost. Every

ring of the telephone brought a spike of adrenaline

and a hollow drop in the stomach. The silence

of the wilderness became a suffocating presence.

Then, on April 9, 1995, the phone finally rang

with the news no mother can ever prepare to hear.

The local police were on the line. They needed

Matilda to come down to the station to identify

her daughter's belongings. Ramona's remains have

been found in a wooded area near Yelick Road.

her body bearing the violent marks of assault

and strangulation. The light of Matilda's life

had been extinguished, leaving behind a void

that no passage of time could fill. This stretch

of Yellowhead Highway 16 spans 719 kilometers,

roughly 450 miles, connecting Prince George and

the interior to Prince Rupert on the rugged Pacific

coast. It is a landscape of profound, isolating

beauty. Towering evergreens stand like sentinels

against a backdrop of snow -capped mountains.

Mist hangs low over the Skeena River. But beneath

the canopy, there is an eerie quiet. Self -service

dies out entirely for long stretches. The towns

are small, separated by hours of driving through

unforgiving terrain. For the indigenous communities

that dot this route, the highway is a necessary

artery for survival. a requirement for attending

school, visiting family, or reaching a hospital.

When the provincial government failed to provide

adequate public transportation, young women were

forced into a perilous mechanic of travel. They

stood by the side of the road, vulnerable to

whoever offered an open car door. The Royal Canadian

Mounted Police officially recognize 18 women

who vanished or were murdered along this corridor

between 1969 and 2006. The families, the local

activists, and the indigenous communities who

have lived this nightmare know the true number

is much higher, climbing past 40, perhaps even

50. The discrepancy itself is a source of deep,

festering conflict. Five years before Ramona

Wilson disappeared, another family was fractured

by the same highway. In the summer of 1989, 24

-year -old Alberta Gale Williams was working

at a fish cannery in the coastal town of Prince

Rupert. Alberta was known for her kindness, a

polite young woman who, according to her family,

would not hurt a fly. August 25th was a Friday,

her last day of work for the season. To celebrate,

she went out to a local establishment called

Popeye's Pub. Her sister, Claudia, was there

that night. The air was thick with the late summer

coastal dampness. Alberta was wearing a blue

sweatshirt, black stretch pants, and slip -on

shoes. At some point in the early morning hours,

Claudia turned her head away in a crowded, noisy

environment. When she looked back, her sister

was gone. Claudia searched. The family panicked.

Three weeks later, a group of people scavenging

for old railroad ties near the Taiye Overpass,

about 37 kilometers east of Prince Rupert, stumbled

upon a horrific sight. About 50 feet from the

road, Alberta's naked body lay discarded in the

brush. The physical trauma indicated she had

been strangled and sexually assaulted. The proximity

of the body to the highway suggested she had

been killed very close to where she was dumped.

For Claudia, the loss was absolute. It was a

devastation compounded by the realization that

the killer was still out there, driving the same

roads, breathing the same coastal air. The friction

between the grieving families and the authorities

tasked with finding answers became its own agonizing

battleground. In the early years of these disappearances,

families of missing indigenous women reported

being dismissed. When they tried to file missing

persons reports, they were met with assumptions

that their daughters, sisters, and mothers were

simply runaways, or that their lifestyles made

them disposable. This systemic apathy allowed

predators to operate with impunity, utilizing

the isolation of Highway 16 as a hunting ground.

It was not until 2005 that the RCMP launched

Project EPANA, a task force specifically dedicated

to investigating the unsolved murders and disappearances

along the Highway of Tears. Deep within the RCMP

headquarters, investigators like Sergeant Wayne

Clary were confronted with the physical weight

of decades of tragedy. They stood before more

than 750 cardboard boxes filled with thousands

of documents, field notes, and witness statements

dating back to 1969. Every box represented a

shattered family. But the passage of time is

a cruel adversary in a murder investigation.

Memories fade, evidence degrades. A field note

from the Alberta Williams case indicated that

bloody clothes resembling what Alberta wore the

night she vanished were found near the Prince

Rupert Ferry terminal shortly before her body

was discovered. Those clothes were seized, but

because a body had not yet been found, the evidence

was reportedly not treated with the urgency it

demanded and the items were likely destroyed.

That loss of evidence is a tangible wound for

families desperate for justice. In the absence

of swift justice, the families of the victims

became the loudest voices demanding change, transforming

their grief into a powerful force for advocacy.

They refused to let their loved ones become mere

statistics or cold cases gathering dust in an

archive. Matilda Wilson, despite her suffocating

grief, became a fierce protector of her daughter's

memory. In 1998, during a vigil in the town of

Terrace, A community member named Florence Nasiel

coined the phrase, Highway of Tears, a direct

reflection of the families weeping for the women

they had lost. The name stuck, forcing the rest

of Canada to confront the geography of this violence.

The legacy of these women is now etched into

the very landscape of Highway 16. For years,

yellow billboards loomed alongside the asphalt,

warning young girls not to hitchhike. The signs

read, killer on the loose. It was a message of

fear, a constant reminder of vulnerability. But

the families recognized that this message placed

the burden of safety entirely on the potential

victims, rather than addressing the systemic

failures or demanding accountability from the

communities. They pushed for a new narrative.

In a poignant ceremony in Prince George, a prototype

for a new series of billboards was unveiled.

Family members gathered under the broad sky,

hugging each other and passing out tissues, their

tears a testament to decades of shared sorrow.

These new billboards were designed to honor the

missing and murdered, but also to reclaim the

territory. They emphasize hope and the resilience

of indigenous families, putting the onus on all

travelers to keep the route safe. Julie Dom,

an advocate working with the families, stood

before the crowd and articulated the shift. They

wanted to change the message from a place of

despair to an acknowledgement that this beautiful

territory is their home and that everyone deserves

to be safe within it. Matilda Wilson draws strength

from those new signs. Decades after Ramona vanished,

Matilda continues to walk sections of the highway.

Her daughter Brenda walks with her. They trace

the route from Lake Kathleen to Yelick Road,

feeling the gravel under their feet, feeling

the vastness of the northern air. They pray for

concrete information, for the one missing piece

of the puzzle that might finally bring a killer

to justice. Matilda thinks of her little baby

every day. The physical act of walking the highway

is a refusal to be silenced, a demand that the

world remember Ramona's laugh, her spirit, and

the unjust truncation of her life. The Highway

of Tears remains a physical scar across British

Columbia. a testament to the devastating consequences

of systemic neglect and the vulnerability of

marginalized women. But it is also a monument

to the fierce, unyielding love of the mothers,

sisters, and cousins who continue to search the

tree lines, who continue to demand answers, and

who refuse to let the darkness of that 719 kilometer

stretch extinguish the memories of the women

they lost. Send this episode to someone you trust.

So these stories travel further. And that's the

way I heard it.

The Story