Listen to daily commentary from program director Murray Wood
Murray Wood breaks down the results of Monday's federal election, and says western Canada is waiting anxiously to see if...
In 2024, Saskatchewan RCMP responded to over 2,700 missing person reports. While many of those missing are found within the first 48 hours, some are not.
The Saskatchewan government has declared April 27 to May 3 Missing Persons Week in an effort to help raise awareness for people in the province who are still missing. There are currently 140 people who have been missing in the province for six months or more.
Read more:
- Not your average fire truck: These volunteers fight flames off-road
- Saskatoon police responded to three stabbings over the weekend
- Premier Scott Moe looks for reset on Sask. relationship with Ottawa
The week also aims to highlight the work being done to support missing person prevention, safety tools and responses.
Photographs of people reported missing in Saskatchewan on display. (Roman Hayter 980 CJME)
Drones an important tool for RCMP
Sask. RCMP Assistant Commissioner Rhonda Blackmore said advancements in technology are having significant impacts on missing person searches.
“We have a drone at every single detachment throughout the province. That’s 80 of our detachments. And it has been incredibly helpful to us,” she said.
“Having that aerial view is … a time saver — and when we’re racing against the clock, be it (in) heat or cold, that time is of the essence. To have that technology available to us is absolutely phenomenal,” said Blackmore.
“We’ve gotten numerous instances where people have been rescued or they’ve been reported missing (and) we’ve been able to locate them with the use of our drones.”
Drones are not the only piece of technology available to the RCMP. The National Missing Persons DNA Program uses DNA profiles from missing persons or unidentified remains and can offer closure to families and friends of missing persons by making an identification.
Blackmore said that the program has recently helped out in Saskatchewan.
“In the last year, we’ve located three unidentified human remains and we were able to use DNA to identify those individuals and bring closure to those families.
“And … two of those three individuals weren’t from the province of Saskatchewan, so we brought closure to individuals from outside the province,” said Blackmore.
Photographs of the 140 people who have been missing in Saskatchewan for over 6 months. (Roman Hayter 980 CJME)
‘Not a single day goes by that I don’t think of her’
Many families of missing persons joined together this week to tell their stories of resilience.
One was Paula Bali, whose daughter Mekayla Bali went missing on April 12, 2016.
She said that her search has never and will never stop.
“My heart aches today as it has every day for the past nine years. This week, as Saskatchewan observes Missing Persons Week, the reality of Mekayla’s absence feels even heavier,” said Bali.
“Not a single day goes by that I don’t think of her and that I don’t pray for her safe return. Nine years is an eternity. It’s nine years of birthdays missed, of milestones unreached, of a constant gnawing emptiness in my family. The questions of where she is and if she’s okay haunt me every moment of every day,” she said.
“If you have any piece of information, no matter how insignificant it might seem, please, I beg you to come forward. It could be the key that finally brings my daughter home.”
Michele Bear’s daughter Richele has been missing since August 9, 2013. Through an investigation, it was determined that she had been murdered by Regina’s first serial killer Clayton Bo Eichler.
While Eichler was arrested and sentenced to life without parole for 20 years in 2016, Richele’s remains have never been found.
Bear said she thinks she knows where her daughter’s remains are.
“I was told three years ago by the investigators working on her case that there is a high possibility that she ended up at the Regina city landfill and they told me it’s going to cost me $400 million to dig her up — and that was three years ago,” she said.
“Until three years ago, we were looking in the ditches, we were walking along the roads. We were looking at fields, we were looking at bushes, we were looking at swamps, we were looking in dugouts,” she said.
“So now we’re just focusing on trying to bring awareness to the situation. We’re trying to bring awareness to the city and trying to tell the city (that) we have to do something and recover these women, because I’m guaranteeing that my daughter’s not the only one that’s out there,” said Bear.
She’s urging families with missing loved ones to never stop fighting for answers.
“Don’t give up. You may get discouraged. You may get a little upset. Don’t give up, okay? Don’t give up.
“It’s been 10 years going on 11 years for me now and I’m not giving up. There’s no giving up in my vocabulary,” said Bear.
Missing Persons Week has been held in Saskatchewan since 2013 and is organized by the Saskatchewan Missing Persons Partnership (SMPP).
The SMPP is a collaboration between government, police agencies, Indigenous and community-based organizations and works to coordinate policies and legislation, share prevention and safety tools and support agencies that provide services to families when people are missing.
Read more:
