On December 12th, 2015, Cédrika Provencher’s family was informed that the body of their daughter had been recovered, her skull found by three hunters in the Saint-Maurice area, near Trois-Rivières.
Missing since July 31st, 2007, the nine-year-old girl went missing near her home in Trois-Rivières. People in the area had last seen the young girl looking for a lost dog that was not her own. She was never heard from again, her bike found leaning against a nearby tree. The search for Cédrika was nationwide, her face peering down from numerous billboards everywhere you went. Eight years later, the Provencher family can finally begin to mourn the loss of their tiny child, taken too soon from this world. While no details have been offered up by the police, the Sûreté du Québec has nearly 200 officers scouring the woods for additional evidence before the first snow fall.
As a mother, I read this story on Sunday evening, my heart breaking for Cédrika’s family. Yes, they can lay her to rest and in a way, find closure. But the person that took their young daughter from this world is still at large, having infringed on a life that wasn’t theirs to take—from an innocent child, no less. Fear rattles my body as I think of this little girl. How can someone dare take what is most precious to you? To rip them from your love? We raise our children to the best of our ability, doing our best to protect them, to keep them safe from harm—we try to provide the best possible life for them. But what justice is this? To have a stranger come and rip them from our lives, with us helpless to save them, despite all of our efforts to safeguard them? Helpless to bring them back to the safety and protection of our love? This crime shakes me—it makes me so angry for Cédrika, for her family, and for the countless missing children that have been ripped from their families to suffer a fate so very far from what life had planned for them.
To the Provencher family—my heart goes out to you. I hope that you can find peace in the knowledge that your angel is at rest now. There is no one in the world who reserves the right to take life from anyone, never mind that of an innocent child with an entire world still laid out before them. I am praying that they find the monster that has torn your lives apart, and that they bring this young girl’s killer to justice. To Cédrika—I pray that you are resting now, dear child.
The Sûreté du Québec asks that anyone with any information please call 1-800-659-4264.
