Bernadine Leanne Quewezance was a 36-year-old Indigenous woman and a member of the Yellow Quill First Nation. Known to family and friends as “Bernie,” she was remembered as an intelligent, outgoing and warm person who was quick to smile. She was the eldest among her siblings and the mother of five children. In the opening hours of 2012, she was in Saskatoon, but within less than a day her body would be discovered along a highway outside the city.
Investigators determined that the last confirmed sighting of Bernadine occurred at about 10:00 p.m. on January 1, 2012, in Saskatoon. Police subsequently received information suggesting she may also have been in the area of 20th Street at approximately 4:00 a.m. on January 2, although that later sighting was not confirmed. What happened to her during the hours after she was last positively seen has remained one of the central unanswered questions in the investigation.
At approximately 9:30 a.m. on January 2, someone walking a dog discovered Bernadine's body in a ditch east of Saskatoon. She was near the intersection of Highway 16 and Zimmerman Road, beside a service road running parallel to the highway, roughly two kilometres beyond the Saskatoon city limits in the Rural Municipality of Corman Park. Police said at the time that the location was well traveled and that her body did not appear to have been there for very long.
RCMP officers quickly treated the circumstances as suspicious and said foul play was suspected. Major Crimes investigators, forensic personnel and members of the Saskatoon RCMP detachment became involved. Authorities have not publicly disclosed Bernadine's precise cause of death, leaving important details about how she was killed outside the public record. Her case has since been formally classified as an unsolved homicide.
Police focused particular attention on the approximately five-and-a-half-hour period between the reported 4:00 a.m. sighting and the discovery of her body. Investigators appealed to anyone who had traveled Highway 16 or nearby roads between about 4:00 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. to recall unusual vehicles, people or activity. Because Bernadine was found so close to a heavily traveled route, investigators believed motorists or others in the area might have witnessed something significant without realizing its importance at the time.
Despite the investigation and repeated appeals for information, no suspect has been publicly identified and no arrest, charge, trial or conviction has been reported in connection with Bernadine's death. The case remains active and is listed by the Saskatchewan Association of Cold Case Investigators as an unsolved homicide under RCMP case number 2012-5758. The F Division RCMP Historical Case Unit continues to seek information that could establish who was responsible and explain what occurred between Bernadine's final known movements in Saskatoon and the discovery of her body beside Highway 16.
