Five years to the day, to the minute, that local woman Emma Fillipoff went missing, dozens gathered for a vigil to light her way home.
The candlelight vigil was held at the Stewart Park gazebo behind Perth town hall on Tuesday, Nov. 28, at 7:17 p.m., which was the time “when the police left Emma, five years ago,” said the vigil’s host, Melanie Weber, in welcoming community members.
The vigil was being held on the same night as other vigils across the country, in places like Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Vancouver, British Columbia, as well as Campbell River, BC, on the eastern shore of Vancouver Island. The Perth vigil took place during an unseasonably warm November evening, with the gazebo already adorned with white Christmas lights, made all the more bright with dozens of candles held by men, women, and families.
Weber said that, “terrifyingly, many of us can empathize,” with the feeling of not being able to “know where your loved one was for five years. I hope there is some peace for Emma’s family tonight,” she said.
There was a moment of silence, as well as a group singalong of the Louis Armstrong song What A Wonderful World, and the Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers song Wildflowers, which included the bittersweet lyrics: “You belong among the wildflowers/You belong somewhere close to me/Far away from your trouble and worry/You belong somewhere you feel free/You belong somewhere you feel free.”
Weber admitted that she did not know Emma, but she does know her mother, Lanark Highlands Township resident Shelley. From what she has heard of Emma, it was “not often did one find so much joy in every rock and tree and feather.” She hoped that Emma was finding “peace in what she is doing … or that someone will be put in her way to provide help.” She encouraged attendees to “work your hard magic any way you can, through prayer or good wishes.”
After the moment of silence, Weber said that a moment always seems to last longer than one thinks it will, but that, “I know it’s nowhere as long as five years of waiting to hear what you want to hear,” she said.
The event was recorded to be broadcast online where, she hoped “that she (Emma) gets to know or hear about it.” She had a message for Emma too: “Nobody wants to take your freedom,” her family just wants to know that she is safe, “alive and happy.”
Looking around the gazebo, Weber said that, especially in a small town, “we all like to feel humanly attached,” and that an event like that evening’s vigil had accomplished, in a small way, just that.
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