Remembering Erin Gilmour

She was my older sister, but she was also a bit of like a surrogate mom to me and my brother and somebody. I could sort of literally tell anything I needed to. I was literally had started a new school in grade 9 and I was having a real struggle with it. And I couldn’t stand being there. And, and I remember turning to her, I couldn’t talk to my mom about it, but she was like literally a great advisor to sort of go and sit down and, and tell her about what was going through my mind. Because we were the same age, we played together a lot as kids, like when we were young. So we always had, you know, Christmas dinners and birthdays and we traveled together and we worked together and, you know, went to parties together and had friends, similar friends. She was just, she was fun and she had this the cutest smile. Every year we would always have, you know, my mom and my stepdad would throw a massive Christmas party here. Some of my greatest memories are in this room just from Christmas mornings with the family. Ben Aaron would be here and, and always would have gifts here for us. She even had gifts here on that last Christmas of December 83 that were sitting under the tree for us that day. I took Aaron’s gift and then I quietly sort of went, went up to my room and, and opened them on my own and had, you know, a bit of a moment for sure. There was some tears and, and, and sort of got through them. And I even kept the wrapping paper for, you know, for months afterwards. Just wanted to sort of sort of hang on to anything I could of the whole. Moment. It was like you knew. You knew. It was like the last gift I was ever going to get from her. This is the photo that I took of Aaron the year before she was killed on this beach. She loved to come here with her brothers and I asked her to do a pirouette on the sand. And she looked to me just like the Botticelli Venus with her hair, long hair and her delicate hands and doing that beautiful swirl around. So it’s something that’s extremely special to me. I always think of her. I think of her every single day. She was special.