Her laugh made 'ears tickle': Family mourns Kayla Rae, found dead in Winnipeg bus shelter

Kayla Rae laughed like a hyena and lit up a room, drawing people toward her — and it's those memories that will live on, outshining the tragic ending to her life in bus shelter on a frigid Winnipeg afternoon, says her sister.

"We made so many fun memories I will forever keep close to me," said Kesha Rae, 24 — three years younger than Kayla.

"She was always laughing and cracking jokes with everyone she loved. Growing up she was the big sister I adored to be."

Joanne Rae, the mother of the two young women, described Kayla's laugh as the kind "that will make your ears tickle."

"She was helpful. She was kind. She had compassion," Joanne said between sobs. "She was just a loving, caring person [who] just got mixed up."

On Monday, as a cold front blew in and temperatures dropped far below normal, street outreach workers found Kayla unresponsive under blankets, lying on the floor of a Winnipeg Transit shelter.

The Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service was called to the bus shelter at the corner of Tache Avenue and Goulet Street — a block from St. Boniface Hospital — around 1:45 p.m, where they found a person in critical condition. 

Due to privacy issues, no further details were provided by the city, but Kesha said her big sister — whom everyone called Birdy — died from cardiac arrest.

Kayla was the second-oldest of seven kids from a family in North Spirit Lake First Nation in northwestern Ontario, an Oji-Cree community just over 300 kilometres north of Kenora.

Kesha was adopted as an infant and moved to Winnipeg. Not long after, her biological family moved to the city as well.

Her two families were extremely close, so she saw her siblings regularly. When she was 12, Kesha's biological family moved back to North Spirit Lake, while she remained in Winnipeg.

"I didn't see Kayla a whole lot … but we always talked on the phone, or I flew out to visit my mom and the rest of my siblings every summer," said Kesha.

When she was 17, her adoptive mother died, so Kesha moved to North Spirit Lake to live with the others.

"I remember [when] we lived in Ontario, [Kayla] was always up to something — drawing or watching a show in her room, playing with her hair — dyeing or styling it — or helping my mom with the motel she runs.