Emily Norma Ballantyne
When Emily Ballantyne, a 24-year-old mother of five, left her home in Lynn Lake, Manitoba to play bingo on April 25, 1991, it was the last time her family ever saw her. Police determined she arrived in Thompson two days later with two men. Winnipeg RCMP revisited the case in 1997 and collected DNA from family members, but Emily’s disappearance remains a mystery.
April Ballantyne doesn’t know her mother.
When she was born, her Aunt Martha adopted her from her biological parent, Emily Ballantyne.
April was the youngest of five girls and grew up in Lynn Lake, Man. separate from her sisters and her father.
On April 25, 1991, the last day Emily’s family saw her, baby April wasn’t even old enough to walk.
She started looking for the true story about what happened to her mother ten years later.
“I never really asked about her up until then,” said April, who knew she had been adopted at birth as soon as she could understand it.
“Finally I was like, ‘Well, where’s my mom then? I want to meet her.’”
More than a decade later, April has never been able to do that.
She’s never had the chance to listen to her mom’s advice, she has never been able to give her mom a hug and she has never heard her mother say ‘I love you.’
“I'm never gonna have that mother-daughter relationship like how everybody else feels about it and I envy all the girls that have that,” April said, noting there are times when she can’t stop her tears.
“But I also get upset, too when some of my friends come up to me and they always complain about their mom. And l always, you know, respond... ‘You should be happy... You have her.’”
While investigators suspect foul play, the Ballantynes know little about the circumstances that make Emily’s case suspicious.
Circulating rumours often skew the narrative of the 24-year-old case.
Samantha Mason, April’s aunt and Emily’s older sister, is skeptical that Emily even made it to Thompson, Man.
She is, however, certain that police should have put more attention on the case when her little sister first disappeared.
“I don’t think they really did anything to let the public know that my sister was missing. I think it was just all word of mouth,” she said.
“And then there was no picture, no nothing. All they said was my sister was missing from Thompson and that was it. Nope, there’s no nothing.”
Samantha says Emily was “just a really happy-go-lucky kind of woman,” and people in her company always left smiling because of her youthful energy.
Emily met her husband through her passion for music, and the pair spent time traveling in and out of communities in Manitoba, singing gospel.
Amidst the good notes, Emily grappled with addiction in her life.
She never lived in foster care herself, but Samantha says the child welfare system frequently intervened to take care of Emily’s five daughters.
“The only thing that was there was drinking. Too much drinking,” said Samantha, referring to Emily and her husband.
“And when they smartened up, everything was good, and then they started drinking again and the kids would be taken away. That cycle begins again.”
It's been 24 years since Emily was taken away from her family. As Samantha waits for answers, she says she would support a federal inquiry into Canada’s missing and murdered indigenous girls and women.
“It would be nice for the government to say yes,” she said.
“It’s just bad. It makes Canada look bad,”
She continues without a pause.
“But then again, Canada always manages to make us look like we’re lost all the time. Natives aren’t lost. We’re never lost.”
https://www.cbc.ca/missingandmurdered/mmiw/profiles/emily-norma-ballantyne
