“‘My God,’ he said, ‘there’s not one person that has a thing bad to say about her.’”
Chantelle’s mother Jennifer Shirreff said the investigator told her this while working on the case of the death of her daughter, Chantelle Hole.
Or Chantellie, to friends and family.
“She was always so easy-going,” said Chantelle’s best friend Renee Nicholson. “She told it like it was, even if it was a harsh truth to hear. So I always knew I was getting the honest, what-Chantelle-thought ... Everybody always loved her ... Super strong.”
Born August 22, 1991 in High Level, Shirreff said her family moved to Athabasca, around the time Chantelle started Kindergarten. She said Chantelle also attended Edwin Parr Composite School, where she completed up to Grade 10.
She also worked at Extra Foods for a while, and as a bartender at Neighbours Pub in Athabasca.
“There’s so many people that knew her in the community,” Shirreff said. “She’s pretty tenacious and outspoken, but I think that’s what people appreciated about her. They always knew where they stood with her.”
Chantelle’s father, Kevin Hole, said he always thought she was independent, and “more of a tomboyish kind of person.”
“Into riding horses, but then she’d go golfing or go to the shooting range,” he said. “She always had a love of animals.”
Shirreff added Chantelle had been a member of the 4-H Thunderin’ Hooves Club.
“She did 4-H Regionals twice at Northlands,” she said. “There’s one show she won all first in her class, except for one was a second place — I can’t remember what it was. I’ve got all those ribbons here in a binder.”
Shirreff said Chantelle did professional shows with her horse Bugsy in Calgary.
“She was very much a horse person,” she said. “We showed a lot of the circuit around Athabasca, so we did Rochester, Athabasca, Westlock.”
Shirreff said that after one show, she placed fourth in her zone and was invited to Texas for an award presentation.
“She would do English, Western Pleasure,” she said. “She would do trail — her horse and her were just astronomical at trail.”
Nicholson’s love of her friend resonated through her actions helping with horses.
“She’s the only person I’ve ever cleaned a horse penis for,” she said. “For shows ... It was the weirdest experience ever.”
Shirreff said Chantelle had been excited about her new job at a liquor store, which she had just over a month.
“It had all kinds of notes about how she was going to display things differently,” she said. “She was just so pumped. She was so excited about it, and she had that personality, that it would have worked.”
Kevin Hole said she loved her brother, Cody, who was four years older than her. He added he was always trying to get her to move to Vernon, B.C.
“If she needed someone to talk to, she’d call him, and vice versa,” Kevin Hole said. “She just wanted to stay in Athabasca, it seemed like ... Where she worked, I think she enjoyed it, when she was at Neighbours. You know, everybody’s having fun, and she’d probably be the first one to step in and try and break up a fight.”
Nicholson said Chantelle loved her dog, Diesel and had been working on her GED.
“She was doing outreach stuff ... Education was important to her to finish, a lot, because of her mother,” Nicholson said. “She loved kids. She definitely wanted to have a family.”
Death
On June 24, Randy Greg Potskin was found guilty of manslaughter in Chantelle’s 2017 death after a judge determined that his claim of a home invasion was “illogical” and lacked corroboration.
Shirreff, who had moved to Creston B.C. in 2015, said she initially found out about her daughter’s death through a phone call from the Slave Lake RCMP.
“I just couldn’t believe it,” she said, adding she was alone at the time, and was encouraged to contact victim services the next day. “In a murder trial, they tell you nothing — nothing at all, other than she’s deceased and it looks suspicious.”
Shirreff said she also heard rumours from those who were at the scene, but everything was saved for evidence in court.
“It was a hard two years waiting,” she said. “It’s just horrific, thinking up every possibility of what might have happened to her.”
Kevin Hole said he had last seen Chantelle a month before she died.
“She came here and stayed a couple nights, and just acted like my little girl,” he said. “We were actually supposed to go there that weekend. We still have a house in Athabasca ... I don’t know if that would have made a difference or not.”
Shirreff said money donated at Chantelle’s funeral was given to victim services.
“I didn’t know enough about women as victims of crime, domestic abuse,” Shirreff said. “I sent them a cheque for everything that was donated at her funeral ... You think back now, woulda coulda shoulda. You can’t fix it, because you didn’t see it, because you weren’t savvy enough about it. I wasn’t, anyway.”
Nicholson said that after the death of her friend, she took an online course on domestic violence.
“Looking back after that, there’s a lot of red flags I should have paid better attention to,” she said. “But you never think anything of it at the time ... Chantelle’s proof of where it can end.”
Nicholson also said the friends and family are now the ones left to try and make sense of it all, keeping her memory alive.
“And not letting her murder be the only thing people really remember her name for,” she said. “You Google her name — it’s the most depressing thing. Not anything she achieved or any pictures. Just headlines of her murder.”
Shirreff, who is also an artist, said this Christmas, she made cups for family members with a picture of Chantelle.
“I put on the cup, ‘Just one more chapter,’” she said. “Because that’s all we really wanted, right?”
Campaign
Shirreff said she had started a campaign to raise money for the new Agriplex arena in Chantelle’s name.
The campaign is through an auction in the Facebook group, “Chantelle Hole Memorial Fundraiser AUCTION for Athabasca Agriplex Arena.”
“It’s going all back to the community. I want everything to go back to the Athabasca community where she grew up, where she was engaged, where she had so many friends,” Shirreff said.
“I just want it to go to Athabasca. I want that plaque up there, and I want to be able to go somewhere and say ‘Hey, Chantellie.”
