Barbara Kentner’s daughter, Serena, right, was battling leukemia during the trial of her mother’s killer.David Jackson/The Globe and Mail
Serena Kentner was 16 years old when her mother, Barbara, died on July 4, 2017. She had been living in Edmonton when a horrific attack on Barb made national headlines that winter – a heavy trailer hitch hurled at her from a vehicle that sped past Barb and her sister Melissa as they walked down a street in Thunder Bay. She died of those injuries about six months later.
Less than five years after her mother’s death, Serena, who had been diagnosed with leukemia, died in a Thunder Bay hospital on Monday. She was 21.
At the time of the attack in 2017, the mother and daughter had been planning to reunite in Edmonton and were excited about Serena’s high-school graduation in a couple of years.
Instead, Serena returned to Thunder Bay to be with her ailing mother. After Barb’s death, the bright, straight-A student who had once been determined to complete high school found her new world without her mom to be difficult. The family – a loving, supportive circle of aunties, uncles and cousins – had to navigate their grief within the court and justice system, enduring the trial for manslaughter (downgraded from second-degree murder) and the sentencing of the man who threw the trailer hitch. Brayden Bushby was found guilty last year and is serving an eight-year sentence.
Serena eventually dropped out of high school, and received her cancer diagnosis during the court proceedings, undergoing a bone marrow transplant in Ottawa. It was another blow to a family that had endured so much, including the untimely deaths of Barb and Melissa’s parents years earlier.
Serena watched on livestream from her hospital room as the Crown attorney read her impact statement at a presentencing hearing in February, 2021.
“When I see people with their mothers, it makes me mad,” the statement read. “I wish she was here. I was able to tell her anything and everything. She was my best friend.”
Serena was Barb’s only child, and the oldest of nine siblings on her father’s side. She spent the last few months undergoing chemotherapy treatment in Thunder Bay, where her father cared for her. She had previously lived in Wabigoon, about 330 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay, with her aunt Melissa and cousins, working at the local gas station.
Serena’s body was returned to Wabigoon, where she lay in an open coffin at the front of the hall at the community centre for four days – part of Anishinaabe protocol. She wore her favourite purple wig, and her hands clasped an eagle feather gifted to Melissa during the trial. Other special items were by her side. A traditional drum sat close by, and a table with tobacco for offerings. Her two best friends, Kaitlin Yesno and Kaitlin Gibbon, cousins Isaiah, Markus and Roy Kentner, and Melissa with her partner, Stan Shapwaykeesic, sat on couches, erupting in laughter over their favourite stories of Serena.
After a traditional Anishinaabe service, Serena will be buried on Saturday. With her will be a traditional eagle fan with a wooden handle adorned with a burned image of Barb that was given to Serena after her mom’s death. It was intended to go with the powwow regalia Melissa was planning to have made so Serena could dance.
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