Justice on her bucket list' - and she's not giving up

Sister hopeful despite attending years of court hearings into deaths of Harrison family and now facing the prospect of another trial

- DEMPSEY RAVEN

On trial days, Elizabeth Gallant arrives at the courthouse no later than 9:30a.m. She pushes her walker across the parking lot, through the security scanner and into the third-floor courtroom reserved for the murder trial.

Gallant, 80, a slight woman with warm brown eyes, cropped white hair and a stooped upper back, has done this more than 100 times in the past 10 years, becoming a familiar face at the Brampton Courthouse.

"How are you holding up?" the court security officers sometimes ask.

One-word answers are all she can muster. "Struggling." "Disappointed."

For more than a decade, Gallant has come here to face the people accused of killing her brother, sister-in-law and nephew years apart in their Mississauga home.

The details of the case are well known. Her brother, Bill Harrison, 63, was found dead in his home on Pitch Pine Crescent in 2009. His wife, Bridget Harrison, 63, died there in 2010. But it was only after their son, Caleb Harrison, 40, was discovered strangled in the same home in 2013 that police determined all three Harrisons had been victims of homicide.

"I have to represent my family," says Elizabeth Gallant, 80, who has been in court more than 100 times over the past 10 years to face the people accused of killing her brother, sister-in-law and nephew. The case raised serious questions about how police, coroners and forensic pathologists failed to make connections between the deaths sooner.

As the matriarch of her family, Gallant has been a steady presence in court through the odyssey that has followed her nephew's death, a tiny but powerful reminder of the toll the crimes have taken on everyone who knew and loved the Harrisons.

Now, after the latest case ended in a mistrial, Gallant faces the prospect of doing it all over again - a third trial in seven years.

A friend who came to support Gallant in court last month remarked on how the case had aged her.