SASKATOON—Anyone who was born and raised in Saskatoon knows the story of the horrific end of Alexandra Wiwcharuk, the 23-year-old City Hospital nurse whose battered remains were found in a shallow grave two weeks after going missing.
Retelling that tragic incident and retracing the steps of Wiwcharuk’s final hours in 1962 was one of several scheduled storytelling events for Jane’s Walks, held from May 2 to 4, Friday to Sunday, in various parts of the city.
City Chief Archivist Jeff O’Brien led the walking tour for Wiwcharuk, which attracted about 100 residents who wanted to learn more about one of the city’s notorious unsolved cases. Wiwcharuk had won several beauty pageants, including in her hometown of Yorkton.
The walking tour retraced Wiwcharuk’s steps, from the time she left her basement apartment that she was renting with two other co-workers along 7th Avenue North, and where her lifeless and mangled body was found almost two weeks after she was reported missing.
O’Brien guided the group from 7th Avenue North to the pathway on 33rd Street, heading to the Meewasin Trail by the riverbank, where Wiwcharuk went for a walk before working the night shift at the City Hospital.
According to witnesses, Wiwcharuk was seen at Mead’s Drugstore near her apartment between 8:30 p.m. and 8:45 p.m. Later, between 9 p.m. and 9:45 p.m., she was seen by a group of boys fishing on that spring evening.
That was the last recorded sighting of Wiwcharuk alive, as she did not come home or report to work that night. The hospital called twice when she did not report to work on her scheduled shifts, which is when her roommates became worried.
O’Brien said they called Wiwcharuk’s family, her other friends, and her boyfriend. Then they called the police to file a missing person’s report. The police, however, said they don’t do a missing person’s report until a certain amount of time has passed.
The first time the public learned about Wiwcharuk’s disappearance was on May 22, four days after the hospital called to say she had not reported to work on May 18, with a short article in the newspaper talking about a Saskatoon nurse that has gone missing.
Local journalists took notice in the following days, and the police regularly arranged a radio broadcast of the missing person’s alert. At first, there were speculations that Wiwcharuk had just run off with some guy and was not missing. It turned out otherwise.
O’Brien, on the last stop of the tour, warned everyone before telling the story how Wiwcharuk’s remains were found in a shallow grave, half-naked and badly beaten, on May 31. An autopsy showed she died of suffocation after 小蓝视频 buried alive.
O’Brien said that she wants everyone to know Wiwcharuk’s story and that the memory of the fun-loving and outgoing beauty queen, even her tragic death, remains in the public’s consciousness.
“I want people to remember her and what happened to her on that night. People tend to forget, and I do not want people to forget the story of Alexandra,” O’Brien told SaskToday after the walking tour ended.
“I’ve researched a lot of the information in newspapers and accounts of other people who have also done extensive research on her case."
