Life
Osborne was born in Norway House, Manitoba, the eldest of many children born to Joe and Justine (née McKay) Osborne. Her ambition was to go to college and become a teacher. However, the only way to succeed in doing so was to continue her education away from the reserve as secondary education was not available. She spent two years at Guy Hill Residential School, just outside of The Pas, and in the fall of 1971 went to live with a white family (in a government programme where the families were reimbursed for hosting Native students) in The Pas, Manitoba. The Pas was a culturally-mixed town of whites, Métis and Cree people. Helen Betty attended Margaret Barbour Collegiate in The Pas.
On the evening of her death, she had spent the evening with friends at The Northern Lite Cafe and then at the Bensons' place (where she was staying) before heading back downtown. After her friends went home, little is known of her whereabouts after this time, around midnight. She was walking home at approximately 2:30am when she was abducted, brutally beaten, sexually assaulted and killed. The following day Kenny Gurba, a fourteen year old in the town, grew tired of fishing and went off looking for rabbit tracks when he discovered her unclothed body. He and his father reported the discovery to the police.
Read more about this topic: Helen Betty Osborne
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“Consider his life which was valueless
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Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man.
Ask. Was so much expenditure justified
On the death of one so young and so silly
Lying under the olive tree, O world, O death?”
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In a new cottage on the ancient spot.
The life is not yet all gone out of it.
And come and make your summer dwelling here....”
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“For, as it is dislocation and detachment from the life of God, that makes things ugly, the poet, who re-attaches things to nature and the Whole,—re-attaching even artificial things, and violations of nature, to nature, by a deeper insight,—disposes very easily of the most disagreeable facts.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)