Canada Day and the street is full of people, full of red and white and sun and music. And me, a tiny girl, small even for a three-year-old, looking up past legs, torsos, arms, and hair; looking up at a gleaming blue sky. My mother holds my hand so softly from behind, she never does that, walks me deeper into the crowd. She yanks my arm, picks me up, rips me away from the strange old man who held my hand so softly, stops me from becoming another missing girl, forever lost, forever swallowed up by the desires of men.
Jennifer Robinson is an emerging writer from Treaty 1 territory, the traditional home of many First Nations. She no longer celebrates Canada Day.