Searching for Reg

December 4 - Helen and I jumped in the car and thought we could head him off over in Souris West and we drove out to past Rollo Bay West and we did not see him.  We came back and told Art, and we believed he hid some place until the heat came off him.  From that point on my gut feeling was he wasn’t in shape to drive any further than 20 minutes because of the shape he was in.  Over the years, we had put pressure on him and he left but always he came back or contacted us in some way, but we know now that this time was different.

We started checking around and driving different areas.  He had an odd colored car, a purple Pontiac and it should stick out like a sore thumb, but to our regrets now we know that wasn’t to be.  The weather was good, cold -10 Celsius, but no snow.  By Tuesday afternoon, December 6, there was no word so we reported him missing to the RCMP in Souris.

A young constable, Marc Potvin, was assigned to the case and he was wonderful and as time progressed, he got very interested in finding Reggie.  A great deal of his work on the case was on his own time, and he is a credit to the force and was a tremendous help to us.  There was an All Points Bulletin on Reggie from Coast to Coast.  Marc did a terrible lot of inquiring.  Reggie had a cell phone on him and he made 5 calls about 20 minutes after he left home.  1 call home to his mother, 1 call to his friend, [xxxx] one to [xxxx] boss, one to a number in Nova Scotia, we think he pushed the wrong number, and the last one was home.

His son, Steven answered it and Reggie said, “Where’s Mum”.  I’m looking for mom and she was not home and Steven didn’t know that he was gone.

We discovered after that he had removed the battery, that way the phone can’t be traced.  Art and I nearly wore out all our trucks on all the poor wood roads, people were contacting us to volunteer to search for Reggie, but we didn’t know were to search.

By the time we thought about checking the Confederation Bridge, their camera tapes had been erased.  There was still no snow and Art mentioned that we should get a plane and search. They told us to fly under 1000 feet  and we needed permission from the RCMP. We contacted Souris RCMP and it seemed we would have problems in getting permission.

 Then I decided to go the political route- Time was of the essence as snow was close at hand  (it began snowing two days later).