Bernice Sampson followed the path of the seven white doves with her eyes, squinting as they quickly flew west and disappeared over the rooftops. A rare smile spread over her face.
"It was just beautiful," she said.
The birds burst into the air above a quiet west-end baseball diamond yesterday afternoon, seven birds to honour the seven years of Katelynn Sampson's short life. They flew above the 30 or 40 large cards displaying messages to the little girl, hung on a wire fence above the scores of lit candles and teddy bears strewn below them.
It was a brief joyful moment for a community struggling with questions about how something so terrible could happen to a young child many knew as an "angel."
Katelynn's battered body was found on Aug. 3 in the second-floor apartment she shared with her foster parents, Donna Irving and Warren Johnson. A judge had granted them custody last year as her mother, Bernice, battled a drug addiction. Irving, 29, and Johnson, 46, have been charged with second-degree murder.
About 200 well-wishers, some wearing pink T-shirts reading "Katelynn," gathered at a memorial for the girl in the playground next to the Parkdale Community Recreation Centre. As bagpipes played "Amazing Grace," a few wiped away tears. Many mourners were residents of the apartment towers where the girl spent her last days; others lived close by.
Judy Gale, a local mother of two, paused as she tried to find the words to write on a large card she planned to leave at the memorial.
"I could see her balcony from my balcony," she said, fighting back tears. "You always hear kids screaming. You never know what's real."
Petra Smith shook her head in dismay. A mother of three who lives in the same brown apartment building where Katelynn died, she said what she really wants to know is why no one checked up on the little girl.
Smith's own twin boys, 12, are now scared to leave the house, she says. One of them, Donald, a friend of Katelynn's, is sad and doesn't know what to think.
"He keeps on saying, 'Why, why? Why would someone do that to a 7-year-old?' " Smith said, adding she doesn't know how to answer him.
MP Peggy Nash and MPP Cheri DiNovo both expressed their condolences to the gathered crowd, at times fighting to be heard above the noise of buses passing nearby.
"We all feel this incredible guilt, this incredible responsibility," said DiNovo, who pledged to fight for measures designed to protect kids like Katelynn, including getting lawyers for children as well as adults.
Nash regretted that rules designed to safeguard children didn't help the girl, because "for Katelynn, the most dangerous place was in her home."
Sampson accepted a flow of kind words from neighbours and friends, who came up to hug her and tell her they would visit her.
Sampson expressed her anger at Ontario Court Justice Debra Paulseth, who awarded Irving custody of Katelynn without asking questions about the woman's criminal history of drugs and violence.
"She didn't do a good job or else Katelynn would still be here," she said, inviting supporters to join her in a protest outside the courthouse at 311 Jarvis St., planned for today from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
She expressed disdain when asked about Irving, who she used to consider her best friend.
She said that she was happy to see so many friends out, but that ultimately the memorial wouldn't erase the pain she feels.
"It doesn't," she said plainly. "It does and in a way it doesn't. I'll always grieve."
