‘Getting out of control,’ vigil held in Vancouver to remember B.C. women who died in July
Posted July 31, 2025 2:21 pm.
Last Updated July 31, 2025 8:37 pm.
A small group gathered outside Vancouver’s art gallery Thursday to remember several women who died recently in B.C. and call for changes within the justice system to prevent more such deaths.
Dahye Son, an anti-violence worker at Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter, says femicide is getting “out of control,” and a better system needs to be put in place to protect women from dangerous men.
Police say an 80-year-old woman died in Abbotsford in a murder-suicide in late June, a 51-year-old woman was killed in Richmond July 18 and her partner is charged with second-degree murder, and in Kelowna, Bailey McCourt was beaten to death on July 4 and her husband faces a murder charge.
Other women being remembered were: 40-year-old Michelle Bell from Surrey, stabbed to death in Gastown two weeks ago; an 80-year-old woman killed in Abbotsford in an apparent murder-suicide in late June; a 51-year-old woman killed in Richmond July 18 whose partner is charged with second-degree murder; and a 60-year-old woman who died earlier this month, with IHIT saying her death stemmed from intimate-partner violence.
Son says a man accused of violence against their partners should not be allowed to be released on bail or they should be forced to wear an electronic monitoring anklet.
She says the current criminal justice system is “very arduous,” requiring women to tell their stories again and again, and the result is not always what the victim was hoping for.
The housing crisis in B.C. also makes it challenging for women who try to leave the violence, and Son says the sad part is that their partners also know they can’t afford to leave.
“I think it’s more about how the normalization of femicide in the society is that we’re just continuing to see it without any change, and you might see another case in the news and think, ‘Oh, just another thing that happens in our society.’ But I want us to remember that it’s not OK,” says Son.
“It’s not acceptable for a woman to die because she’s a woman and have her life taken away because she’s with a man.”
On Monday, BC Attorney General Niki Sharma sent a letter to the federal minister of justice, seeking a change in the criminal code, wanting to better protect victims of intimate partner violence by making it more likely for perpetrators of domestic assaults that involve choking to be imprisoned immediately upon conviction.
— With files from Angelina Ravelli, CityNews.
