On
the evening of December 20, 2001, I received a disturbing phone call from my youngest
sister in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, telling me that our brother Terry was
missing. At the time, Darrel and I were visiting our son and his wife-to-be in
Red Deer, enjoying a brief get-together to celebrate the Christmas season. I
was shocked and confused by the phone call and didn’t ask the right questions,
so after sharing the news with Darrel, Dylan and Laura, and being unable to
answer any of their questions, I realized I needed to call my sister and get
more details.
I
found out that Terry was last seen on December 18 at his home in Regina. My eldest sister was the last member of our family who talked to him. He had
called her on her birthday, which was December 17. She was going to have a small get-together at
our parents’ house in Moose Jaw on that day, and invited Terry. My sister says
he declined because he didn’t trust his car in the winter and didn’t want to
take it on the highway. The call ended with the usual sweet sentiments and
“Love you” sign-offs.
On
December 19, my eldest sister received a call from Terry’s wife, Susan, who
told my sister that Terry hadn’t returned home from a shopping trip the day
before. (He needed a few ingredients for a cake he was going to bake, and also wanted
to get a bottle of Scotch.) At my
sister’s urging, Susan eventually informed the police.
I
absorbed the information, which seemed to be lacking a lot of detail, and
wondered what the next steps would be. In phone conversations with my family in
Moose Jaw, I was alarmed that nothing was being done. Family members were
moving forward with their Christmas plans and I think everyone believed that
Terry was going to eventually return home.
I
was nearly convinced that the situation was not alarming, until I suddenly felt
cold all over and felt a searing pain in my heart. It was probably shock and
panic, but I was convinced that Terry was projecting his cold and pain onto me.
I crumbled into a heap and started sobbing frantically, and that was when
Darrel, Dylan and Laura started to share my alarm.
The
three of us talked about what steps we should take next. I again called my
family in Moose Jaw but they didn’t share my alarm. They knew Terry better than
I did because I had moved from Saskatchewan years before and didn’t make many
trips home, so I thought that perhaps their knowledge gave them some insight to
the situation. In the meantime, Laura talked to some of her family
and friends in Red Deer and they were more than willing to travel to
Saskatchewan to conduct a search. I was amazed at their selflessness and
kindness, but we decided we should wait until a formal search, if necessary,
was arranged.
Darrel,
knowing how frantic I was to look for Terry, suggested we go to Regina and
conduct our own investigation. He was supposed to be at work as the acting head
of his department on Monday, December 24, but made special arrangements so he
could help me do whatever we could. Given that it was Christmas time, it was
nearly impossible to change our flight reservations. West Jet was incredibly
understanding and helpful, and managed to get our flights changed so that we would
fly back to Ottawa from Regina on December 26 instead of from Calgary on
December 22. We rented a car to get from Red Deer to Regina and were lucky to have good weather for our 800 kilometer drive.
After booking into our hotel room in Regina on December 22, we drove in the rental car from Regina to Moose Jaw, just a
forty-minute drive, and stopped by my eldest sister’s place to find out what she knew.
It wasn’t much. But she made it clear that the family was moving forward with
Christmas plans and no search was being arranged. Their calmness and optimism
should have provided me with some comfort, but instead my panic started to
bubble up. Darrel and I went back to Regina without stopping in to see the rest
of the family, and with no plans to return to Moose Jaw that trip. Where I was
convinced that Terry was in dire danger, it seemed my family might be thinking
that he had taken off for some reason, but I really didn’t know what they were
thinking. I simply knew that my panic was disturbing them.
At
this point, this is what we knew: Terry
went shopping the morning of December 18 and did not return home. He left in
Susan’s car. That evening, the abandoned car was found 160 kilometers away but
not reported to the police until December 20. There was no evidence of foul
play. Because of recently fallen snow, it was impossible to track where the
driver went.
Over
the next few days Darrel and I were busy. We met with the Regina Police to see
what they were doing. We had recently heard some rumors about a Moose Jaw man
being kidnapped and held prisoner in a basement in the seedier part of Regina,
and we wondered if the police had searched that neighborhood. They assured us
that they were looking into all possibilities, but didn’t have any information
for us.
My
brother Ron, who lived in Moose Jaw, made some “Missing” posters that Darrel
and I would post around the part of town where Terry was last seen. Terry’s
wife Susan provided us with an attractive studio photo of Terry, and Ron did a
great job of designing and printing the posters. He drove to Regina and met us in a coffee
shop near our hotel, and we had an emotional moment sharing hugs and tears and
whatever information any of us had been able to gather, which was really
nothing.
The
people in the neighborhood that we targeted were very cooperative and
understanding. No one refused our request to put up the poster. We stopped at
restaurants, a homeless shelter, a soup kitchen, the hospital, bus and air
terminals, and a number of other places. Everyone took a good look at the photo
and tried to remember if they had seen Terry in the last few days. And everyone
was so sorry that they were unable to help. The homeless shelter allowed us to
walk through the shelter and greet all the residents, in the off-chance that
Terry had somehow become disoriented and ended up there. He hadn’t.
The
workers at the soup kitchen provided surprising emotional support. The women,
who were busy getting ready to put on a Christmas dinner for their clients,
formed a circle with me and we joined hands while one of the women made an
emotional appeal to the heavens above to help us find Terry. The women all
hugged me and shared my sobs and tears. One woman actually yelled out, “Oh
Lord, how could you let this family go through this?” When I returned to the
car, where Darrel was waiting to drive us to our next poster destination, he
saw the strange look on my face and said, “What the heck happened in there?” It
was one of the few moments in those emotional days when we actually shared a
smile. I will never forget those kind and busy women with such big hearts.
Darrel
and I drove to the village of Kennedy, about 160 kilometers from Regina, to pass
out posters there. Terry’s car had been found just outside of Kennedy. We
figured that the best place to start was the bar. There was a good crowd there
– it was the Christmas holidays after all – and there we learned that the town folk had already conducted a search for Terry which unfortunately came up empty. They took a number of
posters and promised that they would post them all around the town.
We
then visited the RCMP detachment where we talked to the officer on
duty. Like the Regina police, he was sympathetic and concerned and he ensured us
that the RCMP were doing everything they could to locate Terry, but there was a
definite lack of hope in his tone.
We were exhausted when we got back to our hotel in Regina that evening, but we made a quick trip to Moose Jaw to update the family on what had transpired. On Christmas Day, the day before we flew back to Ottawa, Darrel and I drove to Saskatoon to visit his family. They could plainly see that I did not believe that Terry had gone missing voluntarily, and again we received an offer, from people who barely knew him, to join the search party. But there was no search party to join.
