My father, Jim MacDonald, later wrote this account of his efforts to obtain government assistance during the first days of the search for Reggie. His account is presented substantially as written, with minor corrections to spelling, punctuation and paragraph breaks.

Asking for Help

December 5, 2005 — The first call was to the federal member’s office in Montague around 4:30 p.m. Later, I found out that the provincial government was responsible for the RCMP.

Early the next morning, I called our provincial MLA. By luck, he picked up the phone. I told him that I had a serious problem and wanted to talk to the Attorney General as soon as possible.

He informed me that he was heading to Charlottetown immediately and was meeting with the Attorney General at 10 a.m. He assumed that he would have news at 10 a.m. and would call me.

Lady Luck was on our side.

Shortly before 10 a.m., a member of the Souris RCMP called me to say the RCMP helicopter was in Moncton preparing to come here. Then there was a beep on the phone.

It was Andy Mooney informing me that there was an RCMP helicopter on its way and that they would contact me before it arrived in Souris. He told me that he would contact me later.

Searching From the Air

The helicopter arrived at the barracks shortly after 11 a.m. The weather was sunny and clear.

The pilot was a very nice young man. One of the first things he asked me was whether Reggie was 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 that, in 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 also wanted to carry extra fuel for more airtime.

I told him about my woodlot where Reggie was cutting hemlock. It 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 the Attorney General’s office. 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 p.m., the helicopter arrived back. The pilot told me that they had gone from East Point to Blooming Point (Tracadie) and across to Wood Islands. They made two passes, north to south and east to west.

The weather was good, and they had seen nothing.

The pilot assured me that if anything turned up, he would come back. He also told me he would contact other pilots in the region to keep an eye out for Reggie’s 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 B.C.

We Were So Close

It started to snow the next day and continued for one week. I figured that everything would be covered over.

Art and I continued to go different places with our 4x4s.

Shortly after Christmas, Art went in the Bull Creek Road and into the lane of the field where Reggie’s car was later found. He got to about six feet from being able to see the length of the field, and there was a snowbank.

We were so close and we never knew.

Looking Back

Editor’s note: Learning months later just how close Art had come to the place where Reggie’s car was found affected him deeply. He believed that if he had been able to get past that snowbank, he might have reached Reggie while there was still a chance to save him.

I saw it differently. From the beginning, I believed that Reggie had probably died within six to twelve hours of arriving at Bull Creek. I told Art that even if he had managed to get through, I didn’t believe he would have been able to save Reggie. Instead, he might have encountered something involving his brother that he would have had to live with for the rest of his life. In that sense, I sometimes wondered whether that snowbank had been a blessing in disguise.

Art never saw it that way. He remained convinced that Reggie could still have been alive on the day he tried to search that road. Even after Reggie’s remains had been recovered and the physical search had ended, he remained firm in his belief that the remains were not Reggie’s.