‘Finding joy’: friends of Montreal woman killed by her ex-boyfriend honour her memory

Friends of a 24-year-old Montreal woman who was killed by her ex-partner in 2021 are honour her memory after the killer was sentenced to life in prison.

It has been nearly four years since 24-year-old Romane Bonnier was killed by her ex-boyfriend.

On Monday, François Pelletier was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years after he was found guilty of first-degree murder in July. Bonnier’s friends are now determined to put her back in the spotlight.

After a long and often painful legal process, Kirsty Campbell and Alexia Martins say they feel their friend can now be at peace.

“It meant, like, she’s not hurting anymore now that it’s done. And now that justice has been served,” Campbell said.

In October 2021, Pelletier killed Bonnier in broad daylight, stabbing her multiple times on Aylmer Street near McGill University.

Years later, Bonnier’s friends still come to honour her memory.

“As bizarre as it could sound, it kind of became the safe place because we all made it a safe place where we can cry together. We can just kind of all bond together,” Martins said.

Both Campbell and Martins are part of an amateur choir where they say Bonnier shone.

“She was a star. She really could sing,” Campbell said.

“Like, singing beside her in the Maison Symphony, that first time we got to sing there after Covid with masks, we were all terrified. But I knew that with her there, I’d have my notes and she would be in tune on the highest notes, and I could just be safe. Like, surrounded by her sound. I would know, like, we’re good.”

Bonnier was also a budding solo singer and had just finished theatre school in Toronto. Her friends say that is how she should be remembered — as a performer with a light that was infectious — and not a victim.

“We wanted to kind of find a way to bring the spotlight back on her and tell the story how it is … that Romane isn’t what happened. Romane is who she was. She was a kind person, she was a generous person,” Martins said.

They say with the trial now in the past, they can start living again the way Bonnier would have wanted.

“There’s a temptation when something like this happens to go into a very dark place and there’s a temptation to get cynical and hard and bitter,” Campbell explained.

“For me, it’s been, like, fighting that for years. And she would want us to fight that because she was not about bitterness, ever. She was always about smiling and finding joy wherever there was joy to be had.”

Wednesday would have been Bonnier’s 28th birthday. Her friends celebrated her by doing what they all loved doing together — singing — and keeping her joyful spirit alive.