THUNDER BAY -- It wasn’t the news Genevieve Desmoulin was hoping to hear.
The bride-to-be, whose wedding is scheduled for Saturday, had planned to spend the day running around, performing last minute tasks ahead of the biggest day of her life.
Instead, tears streaming down her cheeks, she was called to a ball-field in Thunder Bay’s east end, where the nightmare she woke up to on Wednesday morning became reality.
Her wedding dress, left in her car overnight, lay rumpled in the dirt, partially burned. Her 2008 Pontiac Torrent, stolen from in front of her home during the day’s earliest hours, was trashed a few hundred metres away at the other side of the ball-field, along the banks of the McIntyre floodway.
Desmoulin, her fiancé Rian Anderson at her side, was devastated that someone would stoop so low.
“We’ve had a really trying time planning our wedding and a lot of tragic events happened in our families’ lives. This is just one more thing adding to my stress,” she said. “I can’t even explain what I feel right now.
“All I can say is that we’re all human. We all shed the same blood and the same tears and I don’t understand why someone could be so cruel and mean. I don’t know who would do this. I work really hard for everything that I have. I just have no words right now. I’m just really upset.”
She does have words for the perpetrator or perpetrators who stole her SUV, took it for a joyride and then decided to dump its mostly wedding-related contents, on the ground.
“I hope that you stop and think about what you did and how much you’ve hurt somebody that you don’t even know,” said Desmoulins, who arrived at her Wiley Street home late last night, too tired to bother hauling all her wedding stuff into her house, knowing she’d just have to reload in the morning, the nuptials just three days away.
“I didn’t do anything to you to cause you to do this. It’s our special day on Saturday and now I have to find a replacement dress in a short amount of time. If you have issues or problems with drugs or alcohol, you need to get help because it’s not proper to do that to anybody. No matter what, you shouldn’t destroy other people’s things.”
There may be a silver lining to her wedding-day cloud.
Shelby Ch’ng, owner of Unveiled Bridal Boutique, heard about her plight and has agreed to donate a dress for Desmoulin to get married in.
"When I read the story I could not believe this was happening in Thunder Bay," Ch'ng said. "As a business owner in the industry, my heart went out to this bride and I had to call her."
Other friends and even strangers have also pledged support.
“I’ve been astonished with the amount of generosity and support coming from the community,” she said.
Thunder Bay Police’s crime scene unit arrived at the site on Wednesday afternoon and are investigating.
