Stephanie Giroux's brother Cameron used to call her everyday.
At the end of each phone call, he'd say, “love you sister.”
On Canada Day, he told her twice.
“Always remember,” he said.
The two never spoke again.
Five hours later, Giroux got another call, Cameron had been killed.
“He died on my daughter's birthday,” said Giroux.
Twenty-seven-year-old Cameron Sayine, Giroux's younger brother was found unresponsive by police in Fort Resolution in the late hours of July 1.
Sayine was later pronounced dead.
“I was mad. I was angry. I was furious. I just … why? How could this happen? My baby brother didn't deserve to die …,” she said.
“I couldn't believe it. I cried for six days straight to the point my head was pounding,” she recalled in a phone interview with News/North last week.
Sayine's death was ruled a homicide.
RCMP in the community soon arrested and charged 30-year-old Chad Beck, of Fort Resolution.
Beck faces one count of first-degree murder.
Giroux, 34, still can't believe her “baby brother” is gone.
“Cameron has always been my sidekick; always following me around, wanting to be around me and my friends,” she said. Cameron could be a pest, but she “loved him dearly.”
“I took him everywhere. I did everything with him,” said Giroux.
Over the phone, Giroux's voice is heavy, as if weighed down by the weighty of grief when she speaks of her brother's untimely death.
But when she thinks back to their childhood together, growing up in Fort Providence, her voice takes a different tone.
“He was awesome, outgoing, nice, respectful. When my grandparents or my dad needed help, he was always there for me and my brother's kids. They loved him and he was the best uncle,” she said proudly.
“Just by him walking in the room he made you feel better. He'd joke with you, make you laugh,” said Giroux.
“He made you feel loved.”
Before he died, Giroux said her brother was trying to change his life.
“He wanted to stop the drinking, stop the jail. He wanted to go back to school and do all these things he promised us and our mother before she died,” she said.
“He never got around to it.”
Giroux has been plagued by tragedy in recent months.
Following the death of her brother, Giroux's friend Brittany Martel – who consoled Giroux and made plans to attend Sayine's funeral – was found dead in British Columbia.
“She just wanted to come home for Cameron's funeral. Now she's going to her own,” said Giroux.
Beck made his first court appearance in Yellowknife in early July.
Giroux, who lives in Edmonton, said she would not be able to attend Beck's court dates. With her family still living in the North, she said the distance makes Sayine's death all the more difficult.
But Giroux, who said she would follow the court proceedings from away, said she has her loved ones to rely on.
“I have my family, even though I can't see them,” she said.
Her three-year-old daughter still asks about her uncle Cameron.
“She's still too young to understand. She asks but we just brush it off and try to take her mind off it. She's too little,” she said.
But Giroux hopes her daughter – and everyone who knew Sayine – remembers him as that “awesome, loving, caring, wonderful guy that brightened everybody's day.”
Beck is due back in court on Aug. 30.