Plans have been finalized for a celebration of life for Angie Sweeney, the 41-year-old Sault Ste. Marie woman who was killed in her Tancred Street home in a mass murder-suicide attack last week.
Angie’s parents Brian and Suzanne Sweeney said it will truly be a celebration, because that’s what their daughter would have wanted.
“She always made the life of the party for everybody, no matter what she was doing,” said Brian of his daughter. “When it came to a celebration or to help somebody out with a birthday party or something, she was just the best hostess to put out the mostest.”
In years past, when the Sweeney family and friends would get together, Angie was known for bringing her homemade veggie pizza, hamburger soup or her con queso and buffalo chicken dips. Brian said although his daughter and her legendary dishes will be missing from the celebration of life, there will be lots of food and anything left at the end will be donated to those in need.
"There’s going to be a lot of people shedding tears, there’s no doubt about it, but in the end she just wants everybody to have a good time and celebrate her life because she lived her life fully — even in the short period of time she lived,” said Brian.
The celebration of life will be held at Grand Gardens on Saturday, Nov. 4 and will be open to the public from 2 to 8 p.m.
Lindsay Stewart, a childhood friend of Angie, said although many people are upset at the loss, the event isn't intended to be a sombre one.
“She wouldn’t want us to sit around crying, she would want us to celebrate life,” said Stewart.
Brian and Suzanne said the healing process really began with Friday’s vigil held outside The Machine Shop. Hundreds showed up in support of the Sweeneys, as well as for victims of a number of tragedies that have occurred in Sault Ste. Marie in the past few months, including the murder of Taylor Marshall and the death of Mikayla Ouellet in a head-on collision, among others.
“It made my heart lighter to see so many people," Suzanne said of the turnout at the vigil. "It gave me a little bit of peace, to be honest with you."
One of Brian's favourite parts of the vigil was the drumming and performance by the Jingle Dress Dancers, one of whom is their great niece.
“I was glad to see them do that because we are native — I am French, Irish and Indian,” said Brian.
The vigil also gave Brian an opportunity to get a lot off his chest, with his son Brian Jr. right by his side.
“Me being able to say what I wanted to say felt really good too because it gave me a chance to express my inner self,” he said. “I’ll be honest with you, I am glad my son come up there with me because after I was just getting started he could see it coming and he reached over and gave me a couple of pats on the back there and that was just that little bit more I needed to finish off my speech without breaking down."
Brian promises to take his mission of changing the laws around intimate partner violence as far as it has to go to get the job done and he now realizes he has the support of the community to do it.
“Looking at everybody across that crowd and seeing how everybody was focused on me made me feel real good because I thought these people are really listening — now is the time to get my point across,” he said.
As reported by SooToday’s James Hopkin on the evening of the vigil, Brian began his speech by welcoming Marcia Gillespie to the podium. She is the mother of the gunman that took the life of his daughter, but Brian noted she also lost her son and grandchildren in the attack.
At the time, Brian told the community that the family of the gunman, Bobbie Hallaert, “is not responsible for this tragic situation.”
“I am here with this lady right now because she is the other half of my family," Sweeney told the crowd on Friday. "She lost the same grandchildren I lost, she lost a child as I have lost a child. But yet for some reason, people seem to think it’s okay to look down on these people. And that does not sit well with me. She deserves the same respect I do, because we both feel the same pain, and she’s the most beautiful woman in the world and she was one of my daughter's best friends — so it would mean a lot to me that people show respect to that family.”
In an interview over the weekend, Sweeney expanded on the reasons he brought Gillespie on stage. He noted he had met with her and members of her family in the hours before the vigil.
“They started telling me about the nasty notes they were getting and people harassing and saying shit at them and different jabs — I don’t know where it was all coming from — but they felt like they had to hide in the house,” said Brian. “I said: ‘No. That’s not right. You guys had nothing to do with this.’”
Brian has promised not to let the tragedy tear his family apart and said he is driven to realize change as a potential bright spot in the loss of his daughter.
“It might seem like a sad thing, but we’ve all been brought together closer because of it,” he said. “Nothing has brought us together like this and that’s what’s giving us all of the drive to do something with this resource that we have right now.”
On Monday, Brian was in council chambers when mayor and council voted unanimously to declare intimate partner violence an epidemic.
With an entire city population seemingly in mourning, even for some who didn’t know any of the victims, Brian hopes his family and the way they are dealing with the tragedy can be an inspiration for everybody to get out from under a dark cloud of despair.
“We have seen too many families do that. They go into silence and get away from their friends. That’s not us, that’s not what’s going to happen with this group,” he said. “I think if we can show the example that we can come out of this when we are the losers, that everybody else should be able to come out of it, too.”
— with files from James Hopkin