Celebration of Love
The funeral home’s limousine pulled up in front of the house precisely on time. Cliff, Odia, and I rode in the first car with our parents; the rest of the family followed in another. The sun was brilliant, almost defiant, and a fine haze of snow drifted through the air as we pulled away from the house.
As we neared the church, traffic thickened. For a moment I wondered if we might get stuck in traffic jam—and then, almost ceremonially, the cars parted to let us through. As we approached the parking lot—already overflowing—I understood. It was the funeral itself that had created the congestion.
Inside the church, we were guided first to a private room, then into the foyer. Finally, we began the slow walk down the aisle, following Candace’s white coffin. It was covered in red roses, and draped across the front was a banner that read: Friends Are Friends Forever. Faces along the aisle blurred together—drawn, pale, silent. We took our seats on the front bench, and the service began.
The MBCI choir filled the loft above us. We tried to smile at the students we recognized. David was there, seated in the very last row, at the far end. To our left, much closer than I had expected, the media had already taken their places. I felt a flicker of unease and wondered why we hadn’t asked them to sit farther back.
Keith Poysti, our assistant pastor, stepped forward and led the congregation in the opening hymn, “We Praise Thee, O God.” I mouthed the words, uncertain whether my voice would hold.
Keith then introduced Dave Loewen. Dave had been asked to speak on behalf of the search committee—to thank the public, the police, and the media for their tireless efforts.
“By God’s hand, Candace has become a sacrificial lamb,” he said. “This event has brought into sharp focus both the worst and the best of Winnipeg. While evil has run its course, good has triumphed.”
The choir, directed by Peter Braun, rose to sing.
I was acutely aware that nearly two thousand people filled the building. Later, I would be told that many more had been turned away at the doors. I was surrounded by a vast crowd that had come to hold us up in our grief—and yet, in that moment, I felt utterly alone. It was the loneliest moment of my life.
Ruth Balzer interrupted my thoughts as she stood and began to tell Candace’s story.
We had chosen Ruth carefully. She had known Candace through the Camp Arnes Follow-up Program—a winter ministry designed to offer spiritual support to young people between camp seasons. Every Tuesday, Ruth picked Candace up and brought her home again.
Candace always returned from those evenings visibly renewed, lighter somehow, more herself. We knew that much of that transformation had to do with Ruth. I don’t think Ruth ever fully understood what a model she was for Candace—but we did. And it mattered deeply to us that those who had shaped Candace’s inner life, those she loved and trusted, were given a place in this service.
We hadn’t wanted an obituary or a eulogy. Candace was too young for something so staid, so final. Besides, she didn’t have a list of accomplishments—at least not the kind that fit neatly into formal language. What she had was a way of being.
We wanted Ruth Balzer to offer something simpler: a living description of who Candace was, what she was like, and how it had felt to know her.
“To know Candace was to love her,” Ruth began, “not because she was more special than anyone else, but because she knew how to love.”
She spoke about Candace’s joy in swimming, running, playing basketball, riding horses. She told how Candace instinctively drew out the shy, how she noticed the newcomer and made space for them. “I often saw her make people feel welcome,” Ruth said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
She described Candace as a gentle spirit—cheerful, enthusiastic, unpretentious—and as someone with a generous, giving faith. One of her stories sparked a ripple of laughter through the sanctuary, and I smiled through my tears. Candace would have loved that.
A conversation drifted back to me—one I had once had with Candace about funerals.
Back in North Battleford, our church had been involved in two funerals held only days apart. The first was for a powerful man—well known, respected, influential. Yet we were all startled by how few people attended. The atmosphere was polite but detached, marked by courtesy rather than grief. There was little sense of loss.
The second funeral was for a woman who had lived on the lowest rung of life’s ladder. She had been divorced, then widowed—poor, uneducated, living on a pension, burdened with a struggling child. She spoke with a heavy accent, overweight and had no sense of style. By society’s standards, she had nothing. A widow with no mite,. And yet her funeral overflowed.
People packed the sanctuary, spilling into the hallways. Tears flowed freely. Story after story rose like incense—tender, funny, heartbreaking. They spoke of her warmth, her kindness, her quiet loyalty. they remembered the small, ordinary ways she had changed their lives. They mourned her deeply.
I remember sitting afterward with Cliff and Candace, puzzling over the contrast.
Candace listened closely, her questions gentle but probing.
“Why?” she had asked. “What did the she have that made her funeral so alive?”
I felt badly that we had been in that kind of discussion and that she was listening but then in hindsight it might have been important for her to hear. I answered her with “She knew how to love,” I told her. “A love that truly sees another person for who they are—recognizes the beauty there and delights in it.” I think I even referred to that famous chapter on love: love is patient and kind, not self-seeking or easily angered, and how faith, hope, and even prophecy have their place, but will pass away, while love endures forever. Things like that –I really preached it.
Candace nodded then, her eyes wide and thoughtful. I could tell she understood, not just with her mind, but with her heart.
Then the choir rose to sing—and they sang beautifully.
So much care had gone into the music. Katie Epp, our pastor’s wife, had taken full responsibility for selecting and coordinating it. We had entrusted her completely, and now we felt the wisdom of that choice. The songs carried the room. Their words named what we could not quite say ourselves; their melodies held the weight of the moment without overwhelming it.
Then Cliff stood and announced the swimming pool fund.
It was, no doubt, highly unusual to introduce such a thing at a funeral. But this, too, belonged to the story. It was not an interruption—it was a continuation.
And then Candace's song...
Cliff introduced the song, Friends are Friends Forever, and told the congregation how Candace had played this song every night for the last year and a half, how the words were her gift to us now.
When that that song that had been so much a part of Candace floated through the loudspeakers, it was as if her presence walked softly down the aisle. The tears began to slip.
The chorus:
And friends are friends forever
If the Lord's the Lord of them
And a friend will not say "never"
'Cause the welcome will not end
Though it's hard to let you go...
I've been told that there wasn't a dry eye in the place. Even though it was painful to cry, all of us needed to do it.
The song continued:
In the Father's hands we know
That a lifetime's not too long to live as friends
Pastor Epp stepped to the pulpit as the last notes of the song faded and began his meditation. "Whatever evil befell Candace, it will not have the last word in her life. God's peace is the last word," he began.
He was echoing our hope.
CBC radio was broadcasting the funeral live - so all of Winnipeg had access to that moment.
And then it was over, and we were following the white casket down the long aisle. Another of Candace's songs, "Great Is the Lord," accompanied our procession.
Candace had once told me, "Mom, my favorite song is 'Friends Are Friends Forever,' and I wanted to tape only that one, but I accidently taped 'Great Is the Lord' as well, and now I keep listening to it, too. I like it almost as much. 'Friends' makes me a little sad. 'Great Is the Lord' picks me up and leaves me with a good feeling." And it was doing that for us now….
We stepped outside. The sun had disappeared, and a blizzard swirled around us. Just as I was stepping into the car, a strange man broke through the crowd and grabbed me. He only wanted to give me a little Bible and to wish us well, but it reminded us again that this wasn't an ordinary funeral. The person who killed Candace could easily have come as a guest.
The funeral procession pulled out onto Portage Avenue. Three patrol cars led the way, though we could barely see them through the blizzard. I knew we were part of a sad parade, but for a few moments the storm mercifully curtained us from public scrutiny.
Once outside the city limits, the storm intensified. It was a whiteout again. We could see no more than a car length ahead. Just visible through the blanket of white, three police officers stood at the gate of Glen Eden Memorial Gardens, saluting as we entered, paying their last respects to Candace.
The force of the wind nearly swept us off our feet as we stepped from the cars. My brother Wes, who had come from B.C., wore only a light jacket and was visibly trembling with cold as he struggled with the coffin. He handled it as gently as possible, as if she could still feel pain.
I was grateful for the storm. It was a gift. It would have been so much harder on a beautiful day, with birds singing in the trees. Somehow this violent weather mirrored our inner turmoil: no one has the right to take another person’s life; the world is cruel and unfriendly; innocent children are forced to absorb unbearable pain; since creation itself, something has gone terribly wrong. We are spinning out of control. Candace was in the storm.
The director handed each of us a flower from the spray. I stepped forward to the coffin, suspended above the grave, and bent down to touch it. It was cold.
“’Bye, Candace. I love you,” I whispered.
Afterward, we returned to our church for lunch. The public guests had gone; only friends and family remained. Slowly, people began to tell us what Candace had meant to them.
One young man, who had been in Candace's class and about whom Candace had always talked so admiringly, told us what their friendship had meant to him. I wish Candace could have been with us to hear all those wonderful things being said about her. I was amazed that, young as she was, she had already left a legacy of love.
*****
After a light lunch, Dave Loewen invited everyone to gather around our table in one massive embrace. Someone offered a simple prayer. Then we went home—emotionally exhausted, yet somehow encouraged.
The officers who had been guarding the house were gone. On the dining room table sat a small cut-flower bouquet. A boy from down the street—another of Candace’s friends—had left it for us. A neighborhood store had also delivered large plates of cold cuts for those who would come and stay with us.
It wasn’t until that evening that we realized how much strain we had all been under. We were sitting together in the overflowing living room, finally able to relax. We had plunged into the depths of grief during the day, and now there was a strange sense of relief—almost a quiet celebration—that the event itself was over. It felt good. We had felt Candace collectively. She had been very much alive.
Once again, we went to bed and slept—another miracle.
Early the next morning, we got up to take my parents to the train station. Cliff stopped at a coin-operated newspaper box and bought the city’s papers.
We were stunned when the headlines leapt out at us—both front pages. “Peace Triumphs!” proclaimed Winnipeg Sun, devoting its first four pages to our story. The piece in the Winnipeg Free Press focused more closely on Candace herself. Both articles were thoughtful and generous. Both suggested that, somehow, within all this tragedy, good had triumphed.
My dad had been unusually quiet during the drive, and I wasn’t sure whether it was simply the exhaustion of the past days or something deeper. I watched him carefully as he read. When he finally laid the paper down, there was a new peace on his face.
“Now I understand,” he said quietly. “On the train trip here, I was so puzzled. I wondered where God was. But now I know.”
My father—who usually showed such remarkable restraint in most things—went back to the newspaper stand and bought every newspaper he could find.
Actually, it was my father who first recognized the transcendent power of Candace’s life.
He saw that she had stepped into a simple but profound truth: that God—who embodies goodness and love—created a perfect world for us, a beautiful toy meant to be held, explored, and delighted in. But in the Garden of Eden, we took that toy and broke it. What followed was not innocence but chaos, not play but violence—a world increasingly marked by cruelty and murder.
Yet God, who never withdrew His love, made a promise. If we would take our broken toy and give it back to Him, He would receive it with grace and transform it—making something beautiful again out of what had been shattered.. It is nothing short of a miracle when He does that.
As a child, Candace committed her life to God, and we watched the power of her love quietly grow. Then, as a young teenager, she went even further: she committed her murder to God. In doing so, she opened the door for God to work His miracle—to take what was meant to destroy her and turn it into good.
My father was overwhelmed as he witnessed that moment of transformation unfold before his watchful eyes—the unmistakable beauty of grace at work.
As we neared the church, traffic thickened. For a moment I wondered if we might get stuck in traffic jam—and then, almost ceremonially, the cars parted to let us through. As we approached the parking lot—already overflowing—I understood. It was the funeral itself that had created the congestion.
Inside the church, we were guided first to a private room, then into the foyer. Finally, we began the slow walk down the aisle, following Candace’s white coffin. It was covered in red roses, and draped across the front was a banner that read: Friends Are Friends Forever. Faces along the aisle blurred together—drawn, pale, silent. We took our seats on the front bench, and the service began.
The MBCI choir filled the loft above us. We tried to smile at the students we recognized. David was there, seated in the very last row, at the far end. To our left, much closer than I had expected, the media had already taken their places. I felt a flicker of unease and wondered why we hadn’t asked them to sit farther back.
Keith Poysti, our assistant pastor, stepped forward and led the congregation in the opening hymn, “We Praise Thee, O God.” I mouthed the words, uncertain whether my voice would hold.
Keith then introduced Dave Loewen. Dave had been asked to speak on behalf of the search committee—to thank the public, the police, and the media for their tireless efforts.
“By God’s hand, Candace has become a sacrificial lamb,” he said. “This event has brought into sharp focus both the worst and the best of Winnipeg. While evil has run its course, good has triumphed.”
The choir, directed by Peter Braun, rose to sing.
I was acutely aware that nearly two thousand people filled the building. Later, I would be told that many more had been turned away at the doors. I was surrounded by a vast crowd that had come to hold us up in our grief—and yet, in that moment, I felt utterly alone. It was the loneliest moment of my life.
Ruth Balzer interrupted my thoughts as she stood and began to tell Candace’s story.
We had chosen Ruth carefully. She had known Candace through the Camp Arnes Follow-up Program—a winter ministry designed to offer spiritual support to young people between camp seasons. Every Tuesday, Ruth picked Candace up and brought her home again.
Candace always returned from those evenings visibly renewed, lighter somehow, more herself. We knew that much of that transformation had to do with Ruth. I don’t think Ruth ever fully understood what a model she was for Candace—but we did. And it mattered deeply to us that those who had shaped Candace’s inner life, those she loved and trusted, were given a place in this service.
We hadn’t wanted an obituary or a eulogy. Candace was too young for something so staid, so final. Besides, she didn’t have a list of accomplishments—at least not the kind that fit neatly into formal language. What she had was a way of being.
We wanted Ruth Balzer to offer something simpler: a living description of who Candace was, what she was like, and how it had felt to know her.
“To know Candace was to love her,” Ruth began, “not because she was more special than anyone else, but because she knew how to love.”
She spoke about Candace’s joy in swimming, running, playing basketball, riding horses. She told how Candace instinctively drew out the shy, how she noticed the newcomer and made space for them. “I often saw her make people feel welcome,” Ruth said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
She described Candace as a gentle spirit—cheerful, enthusiastic, unpretentious—and as someone with a generous, giving faith. One of her stories sparked a ripple of laughter through the sanctuary, and I smiled through my tears. Candace would have loved that.
A conversation drifted back to me—one I had once had with Candace about funerals.
Back in North Battleford, our church had been involved in two funerals held only days apart. The first was for a powerful man—well known, respected, influential. Yet we were all startled by how few people attended. The atmosphere was polite but detached, marked by courtesy rather than grief. There was little sense of loss.
The second funeral was for a woman who had lived on the lowest rung of life’s ladder. She had been divorced, then widowed—poor, uneducated, living on a pension, burdened with a struggling child. She spoke with a heavy accent, overweight and had no sense of style. By society’s standards, she had nothing. A widow with no mite,. And yet her funeral overflowed.
People packed the sanctuary, spilling into the hallways. Tears flowed freely. Story after story rose like incense—tender, funny, heartbreaking. They spoke of her warmth, her kindness, her quiet loyalty. they remembered the small, ordinary ways she had changed their lives. They mourned her deeply.
I remember sitting afterward with Cliff and Candace, puzzling over the contrast.
Candace listened closely, her questions gentle but probing.
“Why?” she had asked. “What did the she have that made her funeral so alive?”
I felt badly that we had been in that kind of discussion and that she was listening but then in hindsight it might have been important for her to hear. I answered her with “She knew how to love,” I told her. “A love that truly sees another person for who they are—recognizes the beauty there and delights in it.” I think I even referred to that famous chapter on love: love is patient and kind, not self-seeking or easily angered, and how faith, hope, and even prophecy have their place, but will pass away, while love endures forever. Things like that –I really preached it.
Candace nodded then, her eyes wide and thoughtful. I could tell she understood, not just with her mind, but with her heart.
Then the choir rose to sing—and they sang beautifully.
So much care had gone into the music. Katie Epp, our pastor’s wife, had taken full responsibility for selecting and coordinating it. We had entrusted her completely, and now we felt the wisdom of that choice. The songs carried the room. Their words named what we could not quite say ourselves; their melodies held the weight of the moment without overwhelming it.
Then Cliff stood and announced the swimming pool fund.
It was, no doubt, highly unusual to introduce such a thing at a funeral. But this, too, belonged to the story. It was not an interruption—it was a continuation.
And then Candace's song...
Cliff introduced the song, Friends are Friends Forever, and told the congregation how Candace had played this song every night for the last year and a half, how the words were her gift to us now.
When that that song that had been so much a part of Candace floated through the loudspeakers, it was as if her presence walked softly down the aisle. The tears began to slip.
The chorus:
And friends are friends forever
If the Lord's the Lord of them
And a friend will not say "never"
'Cause the welcome will not end
Though it's hard to let you go...
I've been told that there wasn't a dry eye in the place. Even though it was painful to cry, all of us needed to do it.
The song continued:
In the Father's hands we know
That a lifetime's not too long to live as friends
Pastor Epp stepped to the pulpit as the last notes of the song faded and began his meditation. "Whatever evil befell Candace, it will not have the last word in her life. God's peace is the last word," he began.
He was echoing our hope.
CBC radio was broadcasting the funeral live - so all of Winnipeg had access to that moment.
And then it was over, and we were following the white casket down the long aisle. Another of Candace's songs, "Great Is the Lord," accompanied our procession.
Candace had once told me, "Mom, my favorite song is 'Friends Are Friends Forever,' and I wanted to tape only that one, but I accidently taped 'Great Is the Lord' as well, and now I keep listening to it, too. I like it almost as much. 'Friends' makes me a little sad. 'Great Is the Lord' picks me up and leaves me with a good feeling." And it was doing that for us now….
We stepped outside. The sun had disappeared, and a blizzard swirled around us. Just as I was stepping into the car, a strange man broke through the crowd and grabbed me. He only wanted to give me a little Bible and to wish us well, but it reminded us again that this wasn't an ordinary funeral. The person who killed Candace could easily have come as a guest.
The funeral procession pulled out onto Portage Avenue. Three patrol cars led the way, though we could barely see them through the blizzard. I knew we were part of a sad parade, but for a few moments the storm mercifully curtained us from public scrutiny.
Once outside the city limits, the storm intensified. It was a whiteout again. We could see no more than a car length ahead. Just visible through the blanket of white, three police officers stood at the gate of Glen Eden Memorial Gardens, saluting as we entered, paying their last respects to Candace.
The force of the wind nearly swept us off our feet as we stepped from the cars. My brother Wes, who had come from B.C., wore only a light jacket and was visibly trembling with cold as he struggled with the coffin. He handled it as gently as possible, as if she could still feel pain.
I was grateful for the storm. It was a gift. It would have been so much harder on a beautiful day, with birds singing in the trees. Somehow this violent weather mirrored our inner turmoil: no one has the right to take another person’s life; the world is cruel and unfriendly; innocent children are forced to absorb unbearable pain; since creation itself, something has gone terribly wrong. We are spinning out of control. Candace was in the storm.
The director handed each of us a flower from the spray. I stepped forward to the coffin, suspended above the grave, and bent down to touch it. It was cold.
“’Bye, Candace. I love you,” I whispered.
Afterward, we returned to our church for lunch. The public guests had gone; only friends and family remained. Slowly, people began to tell us what Candace had meant to them.
One young man, who had been in Candace's class and about whom Candace had always talked so admiringly, told us what their friendship had meant to him. I wish Candace could have been with us to hear all those wonderful things being said about her. I was amazed that, young as she was, she had already left a legacy of love.
*****
After a light lunch, Dave Loewen invited everyone to gather around our table in one massive embrace. Someone offered a simple prayer. Then we went home—emotionally exhausted, yet somehow encouraged.
The officers who had been guarding the house were gone. On the dining room table sat a small cut-flower bouquet. A boy from down the street—another of Candace’s friends—had left it for us. A neighborhood store had also delivered large plates of cold cuts for those who would come and stay with us.
It wasn’t until that evening that we realized how much strain we had all been under. We were sitting together in the overflowing living room, finally able to relax. We had plunged into the depths of grief during the day, and now there was a strange sense of relief—almost a quiet celebration—that the event itself was over. It felt good. We had felt Candace collectively. She had been very much alive.
Once again, we went to bed and slept—another miracle.
Early the next morning, we got up to take my parents to the train station. Cliff stopped at a coin-operated newspaper box and bought the city’s papers.
We were stunned when the headlines leapt out at us—both front pages. “Peace Triumphs!” proclaimed Winnipeg Sun, devoting its first four pages to our story. The piece in the Winnipeg Free Press focused more closely on Candace herself. Both articles were thoughtful and generous. Both suggested that, somehow, within all this tragedy, good had triumphed.
My dad had been unusually quiet during the drive, and I wasn’t sure whether it was simply the exhaustion of the past days or something deeper. I watched him carefully as he read. When he finally laid the paper down, there was a new peace on his face.
“Now I understand,” he said quietly. “On the train trip here, I was so puzzled. I wondered where God was. But now I know.”
My father—who usually showed such remarkable restraint in most things—went back to the newspaper stand and bought every newspaper he could find.
Actually, it was my father who first recognized the transcendent power of Candace’s life.
He saw that she had stepped into a simple but profound truth: that God—who embodies goodness and love—created a perfect world for us, a beautiful toy meant to be held, explored, and delighted in. But in the Garden of Eden, we took that toy and broke it. What followed was not innocence but chaos, not play but violence—a world increasingly marked by cruelty and murder.
Yet God, who never withdrew His love, made a promise. If we would take our broken toy and give it back to Him, He would receive it with grace and transform it—making something beautiful again out of what had been shattered.. It is nothing short of a miracle when He does that.
As a child, Candace committed her life to God, and we watched the power of her love quietly grow. Then, as a young teenager, she went even further: she committed her murder to God. In doing so, she opened the door for God to work His miracle—to take what was meant to destroy her and turn it into good.
My father was overwhelmed as he witnessed that moment of transformation unfold before his watchful eyes—the unmistakable beauty of grace at work.
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