Political Help for the Search

The first call was to  Federal Members office in Montague around 4:30 pm.  Later I found out that the Provincial Gov’t was responsible for the RCMP   Early , the next morning, I called  our Provincial MLA and by luck he picked up the phone and I told him that I had a serious problem and wanted to talk to the Attorney General  asap.  He informed that he was heading to Charlottetown immediately and was meeting with  the Attorney General at 10 am.  He assumed that he would have news at 10 am and would call me.

Lady luck was on our side.  Shortly before 10 am a member of the Souris RCMP called me to say the RCMP helicopter was in Moncton preparing to come here  There was then a beep on the phone.  It was Andy Mooney informing me that there was an RCMP helicopter on its way and they would contact me before it arrived in Souris. He told me that he would contact me later.

The helicopter arrived at the barracks shortly after 11 am and the weather was sunny and clear.  The pilot was a very nice young man.  One of the first things that he asked me was Reggie smart.  I said yes, “Very”, he commented that they are the worst kind to find.

I told him Reg spent quite a bit of time in the Glen and there was a chance, I figured, that he was growing pot.  I figured the shape he was in when he left he could not be more than 20 minutes from here by car, if he was still on PEI.  I asked him if he would take my son Art with him, he said there was only room for one and he was taking constable Wood who he said was familiar with the area?  He said he also wanted to carry extra fuel for more airtime.  I told him about my wood lot where Reggie was cutting hemlock that was no more than a mile from where he was later found. We also had people ready to search for Reggie, if anything was spotted.

In the early afternoon, Andy Mooney called from Attorney generals office and the RCMP Superintendent was also there.  They wondered how many days we wanted the helicopter to search.  We were very happy to have it for the day and thanked them very much.  About 4 pm, the helicopter arrived back.  He told me that they went from East Point to Blooming Point (Tracadie) and across to Wood Islands, they made 2 passes, north to south, east to west.  The weather was good and they had seen nothing.  The pilot assured me that if anything turns up, he would come back.  He also told me he would contact other pilots in the region to keep an eye out for his car.  They told me they had seen six different outfits cutting wood in the Glen area, at that moment I figured Reggie had somehow gotten off the Island and was in Western Canada, either Alberta or BC.

It started to snow the next day and continued for one week and I figured that everything would be covered over.  Art and I continued to go different places with our 4x4’s and shortly after Christmas, Art went in the Bull Creek road and in the lane of the field where Reggie’s car was later found.  He got to about 6 feet from seeing the length of the field and there was a snow bank.  We were so close and we never knew.

Marc Potvin and the RCMP members never gave up searching for Reggie. He checked all over Canada, but all the leads turned out to be false.