The National Post, Toronto Sun and the Guelph Mercury all picked up this story and published their own pieces.Click here.
Photo by Norman Traversy.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Finally, Someone Steps Forward with a Heart and a Brain!
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| From In Memory of Aqsa Parvez |
Posted March 5, 2009
Hallelujah! Deepest thanks and gratitude to Atlas reader and Fire Chief, Town of Pelham, Scott McLeod, a wonderful man who contacted one of his Municipal Councillors regarding an Aqsa memorial. Councilor Sharon Cook presented a motion to offer an area in the Pelham Peace Park for a suitable Memorial. Sharon Cook, you are a righteous woman!
Chief McLeod said, "This week the council of the Town of Pelham passed a resolution to install a memorial to Aqsa Parvez in Peace Park in Fonthill (Smaller community within the Town. We expect to be ready some time later in the year and it likely will be placed in one of the areas where people rest during the day. As indicated before, I will send photos of the general area where we propose to locate the memorial."
The editor of Atlas Shrugs, the group in the U.S. who has collected the funds to pay for the bench, tree and plaque said "Scott has been working on this for months. There are indeed wonderful souls in this bizarre world we are living in. None of this would be possible without the Atlas readers who contributed and others who worked on scouting locations, Gerry Vincent, Norman Traversy, and, of course, Robert Spencer who joined me in this effort to honor this lovely, young honor killing victim.
March 4, 2009 07:19 AM - A memorial is being erected in a Niagara area park to honour the life of Aqsa Parvez, an Applewood Heights Secondary School student who was strangled to death inside her family's Mississauga home.
The Town of Pelham will install a bench and plant a tree at Peace Park to honour immigrants who are caught between cultures "and are challenged to conform to both." Pelham councillor Sharon Cook said the bench and tree will honour Parvez.
On Dec. 10, 2007, Parvez, 16, was rushed from her family's Longhorn Trail home to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. She died later that night. An autopsy revealed she was strangled to death, police said.
The high-profile case garnered international attention. Friends of the slain teen said she feared for her life and had been threatened by family members in the weeks prior to her death, over a religious dispute.
Parvez's father, Muhammad Parvez, 57, and her brother, Waqas Parvez, 27, are each charged with first-degree murder in her death.
A Young Life to Honour
The Guelph Arboretum is currently being considered as a site for the placement of a bench and the dedication of a beautiful tree with a plaque to honour the life of the young Aqsa Parvez, killed over a year ago in Mississauga. For those of you who don't know this beautiful location, it is in the city of Guelph, on the University of Guelph campus. These photos were taken over the past few years and show you the beauty of the location.
NOTE: SINCE THIS PREVIOUS PARA WAS PUBLISHED, GUELPH UNIVERSITY HAS TURNED DOWN THE REQUEST FOR A BENCH AND A TREE TO BE DEDICATED TO THIS YOUNG GIRL, WHOSE FATHER AND BROTHER ARE BOTH CHARGED WITH HER MURDER AND ARE CURRENTLY ON TRIAL.IT SEEMS THE SIMPLE ACT OF REMEMBERING AND HONOURING AQSA IS TOO 'CONTROVERSIAL' FOR THE UNIVERSITY TO HANDLE. WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Several features of The Arboretum include:
NOTE: SINCE THIS PREVIOUS PARA WAS PUBLISHED, GUELPH UNIVERSITY HAS TURNED DOWN THE REQUEST FOR A BENCH AND A TREE TO BE DEDICATED TO THIS YOUNG GIRL, WHOSE FATHER AND BROTHER ARE BOTH CHARGED WITH HER MURDER AND ARE CURRENTLY ON TRIAL.IT SEEMS THE SIMPLE ACT OF REMEMBERING AND HONOURING AQSA IS TOO 'CONTROVERSIAL' FOR THE UNIVERSITY TO HANDLE. WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Several features of The Arboretum include:
Toronto Star Story
Reprinted from the Toronto Star
Dec 11, 2007 10:29 AM
Bob Mitchell
Jim Wilkes
staff reporters
A 16-year-old girl is dead and her father has been charged with murder after an attack in a Mississauga home.
Aqsa Parvez, a student at Applewood Heights Secondary School, had been on life support in hospital since yesterday morning.
Police went to the family's two-storey home on Longhorn Trail about 8 a.m. yesterday after receiving a 911 call in which a man allegedly claimed to have killed his daughter.
Paramedics found Aqsa with a faint pulse and rushed her to hospital. She was later transferred to a Toronto hospital and placed on life support.
Peel police said this morning that she died overnight.
Friends at the victim’s school said she feared her father and had argued over her desire to shun the hijab, a traditional shoulder-length head scarf worn by females in devout Muslim families.
Homicide investigators had been standing by, as it soon became clear the young girl wouldn't survive the attack.
Muhammad Parvez, 57, has been remanded in custody and was to make his first court appearance today in a Brampton court.
The victim's brother, 26-year-old Waqas Parvez, was also arrested on a charge of obstructing police.
Neighbours described the family as very private and said several members from three generations have lived in the two-storey home, near Hurontario St. and Eglinton Ave., for just over two years.
School chums say Aqsa had been arguing with her family for months over whether she should wear the hijab.
Pal Ebonie Mitchell, 16, and other friends said Aqsa still wore the hijab to school last year, but rebelled against dressing in it this fall.
They said she would leave home wearing the traditional garment and loose clothing, but would often change into tighter garments at school.
She would change back for the bus trip home.
"Sometimes she even changed her whole outfit in the washroom at school," Mitchell said.
The teen was known to her classmates and Facebook friends as Axa. She posted several pictures of herself on the website in colourful clothes and accessories.
At Aqsa's high school, friends gathered in groups yesterday, struggling to come to grips with what happened and lamenting how she had quarrelled with her father to the point that she recently moved out to live with a friend.
"She said she was always scared of her dad, she was always scared of her brother ... and she's not scared of nobody," said classmate Ashley Garbutt, 16.
"She didn't want to go home ... to the point where she actually wanted to go to shelters."
Friends said the root of her problems was a desire to blend in with friends at school, to wear the fashionable clothes she liked to buy on trips to Toronto's garment district, where she went with friends just last month.
"She liked fashion," said Mitchell. "We went to different stores; she was shopping; she bought lots of clothes."
"She loved clothes, she loved shopping and she loved taking pictures of herself," classmate Dominiquia Holmes-Thompson, 16, said outside the school as friends sobbed at the news.
"She just wanted to show her beauty. She just wanted freedom, freedom from her parents."
"She just wanted to dress like us, just like a normal person," said Holmes-Thompson.
"She was a very kind person, she was really nice; everybody loved her."
Friend Shianne Phillips, 16, said she last spoke with Aqsa on Friday.
"She was crying and she was like ‘I'm really scared to go home. I don't know what I'm going to do.' And that was it," Phillips said.
Dec 11, 2007 10:29 AM
Bob Mitchell
Jim Wilkes
staff reporters
A 16-year-old girl is dead and her father has been charged with murder after an attack in a Mississauga home.
Aqsa Parvez, a student at Applewood Heights Secondary School, had been on life support in hospital since yesterday morning.
Police went to the family's two-storey home on Longhorn Trail about 8 a.m. yesterday after receiving a 911 call in which a man allegedly claimed to have killed his daughter.
Paramedics found Aqsa with a faint pulse and rushed her to hospital. She was later transferred to a Toronto hospital and placed on life support.
Peel police said this morning that she died overnight.
Friends at the victim’s school said she feared her father and had argued over her desire to shun the hijab, a traditional shoulder-length head scarf worn by females in devout Muslim families.
Homicide investigators had been standing by, as it soon became clear the young girl wouldn't survive the attack.
Muhammad Parvez, 57, has been remanded in custody and was to make his first court appearance today in a Brampton court.
The victim's brother, 26-year-old Waqas Parvez, was also arrested on a charge of obstructing police.
Neighbours described the family as very private and said several members from three generations have lived in the two-storey home, near Hurontario St. and Eglinton Ave., for just over two years.
School chums say Aqsa had been arguing with her family for months over whether she should wear the hijab.
Pal Ebonie Mitchell, 16, and other friends said Aqsa still wore the hijab to school last year, but rebelled against dressing in it this fall.
They said she would leave home wearing the traditional garment and loose clothing, but would often change into tighter garments at school.
She would change back for the bus trip home.
"Sometimes she even changed her whole outfit in the washroom at school," Mitchell said.
The teen was known to her classmates and Facebook friends as Axa. She posted several pictures of herself on the website in colourful clothes and accessories.
At Aqsa's high school, friends gathered in groups yesterday, struggling to come to grips with what happened and lamenting how she had quarrelled with her father to the point that she recently moved out to live with a friend.
"She said she was always scared of her dad, she was always scared of her brother ... and she's not scared of nobody," said classmate Ashley Garbutt, 16.
"She didn't want to go home ... to the point where she actually wanted to go to shelters."
Friends said the root of her problems was a desire to blend in with friends at school, to wear the fashionable clothes she liked to buy on trips to Toronto's garment district, where she went with friends just last month.
"She liked fashion," said Mitchell. "We went to different stores; she was shopping; she bought lots of clothes."
"She loved clothes, she loved shopping and she loved taking pictures of herself," classmate Dominiquia Holmes-Thompson, 16, said outside the school as friends sobbed at the news.
"She just wanted to show her beauty. She just wanted freedom, freedom from her parents."
"She just wanted to dress like us, just like a normal person," said Holmes-Thompson.
"She was a very kind person, she was really nice; everybody loved her."
Friend Shianne Phillips, 16, said she last spoke with Aqsa on Friday.
"She was crying and she was like ‘I'm really scared to go home. I don't know what I'm going to do.' And that was it," Phillips said.
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