VIDEO: Tisdale mourns loss of innocence with candlelight vigil

It was a night to shed tears for a young mother and her three children who were killed last week in Tisdale.

Hundreds of mourners from the community, Nipawin and further away, gathered at the Tisdale Town Square on Wednesday to light a candle and remember Jenika, Landen, Janayah and Latasha Gosling.

Family members of the victims were separated from the majority of the crowd to allow them a personal and private area to mourn during the ceremony.

As music, prayers and thoughts were shared with the crowd, tears streamed down the faces of many, and a few quiet sobs could be heard.

When the candles were lit, a number in the crowd and within the group of family members raised their candles into the air.

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By the end of the night, a sea of candles were topped by quivering flames in the wind.

Organizer Louise Schweitzer with North East Outreach and Support Services in Melfort said she was quite happy with the turnout.

“I think it did what it was meant to do, [which] was bring the community together, in strength and in comfort for each other,” said Schweitzer. “To begin to heal from this very sad tragedy that’s happened here.”

Schweitzer said a majority of the community of Tisdale is going through a range of different emotions.

“Grief is a very unique and complex range of emotions that we go through in our own time and our own pace,” said Schweitzer. “There’s been a variety of different feelings and emotions that have come forward and we need to just support people through those.”

She added that the family is experiencing its own range of emotions as well.

“I don’t know if I could even identify one emotion that they’re feeling at any given time, that’s what grief does,” said Schweitzer. “Their bodies have put them in a place that they can cope with what’s happening.”

She said that it seems like the families are pulling together to help each other through their grief.

Gosling’s cousin, Tim Funk, said that moments between happiness and extreme grief are constant.

“We have our moments where we can laugh, and we can share memories and laugh with each other,” said Funk. “Then there’s times like these where we just … it’s all we can do just to not break down.”

Funk added that seeing such a turnout for the vigil really shows the family what support the community is showing.

“Just saying to my aunties and my uncles and everybody that we have this much support from this many places, doesn’t really click sometimes,” said Funk. “Until you actually see the people there, it doesn’t become a reality of how much support they’re getting, and I think it really touched them today.”

Funk went on to say that aside from the hundreds that showed up in person for the vigil, there were more than 500 people watching online, as well through the live stream.

“She was well-loved,” said Funk of his cousin. “I just hope that the message is what touched people all over the world, not just the family.”

In terms of the GoFundMe campaign set up by Funk, he said that donations were coming in from as far as Amsterdam and Australia.

Gosling and her three children were discovered dead in a home in Tisdale in the early hours of April 8 by RCMP.

Her youngest, a six-month-old baby, is the only survivor of the incident, and was discovered with the body of the suspected killer after he had ended his own life in a house in Prince Albert.

The baby is now in the custody of family.

The funeral for Gosling and her children is set to take place at the Alliance Church in Nipawin on Friday.

jbowler@panow.com

On Twitter: @journalistjim