'Her life mattered': Tanya Brooks's family fights to keep her memory alive

A boarded-up and vandalized old school is not a typical site for a memorial, but it's where Vanessa Brooks has come every year to honour her late sister for a decade and a half.

St. Pat's-Alexandra School in Halifax's north end is now closed and the site is marked for redevelopment, but the school was in operation 15 years ago. Students were ferried out on the afternoon of Monday, May 11, 2009, after a body was discovered in a window well.

It was 36-year-old Tanya Brooks. She was last seen alive the night before, walking hastily toward the school.

Vanessa and a small group of family and friends gathered outside the derelict building this year to throw plastic flowers into the window well, sing, embrace and cry as they remembered Tanya and marked the sombre anniversary.

Vanessa said it's painful to return to the site, but she feels it's essential.

"It has to count," she said. "It has to matter because her life mattered."

Police call Tanya's death a homicide, but there has never been a charge in the case. They're still investigating.

Vanessa doesn't think it would take much to solve the case.

"You could end my headache and my heartache and give the closure to our families if somebody just opens their mouth," she said. "We just need people to come forward."

Tanya was a mother of five. She would be a grandmother today.

A Mi'kmaw woman originally from Millbrook First Nation, Tanya was living in Halifax at the time of her death. She was homeless, addicted to drugs and alcohol, and working in the sex trade.

Vanessa said her sister was much more than her vices and didn't deserve to pay for them with her life.

"She was kind-hearted," she said. "She was a very, very talented artist. She was a proud mom.

"She may have made choices and decisions that necessarily don't align with mainstream, but we all have choices and decisions that don't align with mainstream. I don't think that that constitutes for murder."