The Investigation Begins

When my father reported Reggie missing to the RCMP, the investigation was led by Dan McInnis, the acting corporal at the local detachment. McInnis was a veteran officer with approximately 25 years of experience.

Marc Potvin was one of the officers assigned to the investigation. Marc already knew my father, and as the months passed he became the RCMP officer our family dealt with most often. Because of that relationship, he became the officer we most closely associated with the search for Reggie.

Years later, I spoke with Marc about those months and asked him to describe the search from the RCMP’s perspective.

Searching Beyond Souris

Marc remembered that once word spread that Reggie was missing, people throughout the community began looking for him. Family, friends and others drove backroads and checked places where they thought he might have gone.

At the same time, the RCMP had to consider another possibility: what if Reggie had simply left?

They checked the ferries and the Confederation Bridge and worked with police in other communities to determine whether Reggie might have gone to stay with a friend or simply left the area for a few days.

The problem for those searching locally was the weather.

Snow accumulated as December progressed, and many of the smaller backroads and woods roads in eastern Prince Edward Island were not plowed. Some eventually became impassable.

Searching From the Air

The RCMP also organized an aerial search.

Marc participated in a helicopter search that covered a large portion of eastern Kings County.

Years later, when he described that flight to me, one thing he said stayed with me:

“We were so close…”

The helicopter had passed close to the area where Reggie’s car would eventually be discovered, but the search did not take them over the location of the car.

Even years afterward, the way Marc spoke about it left me with the impression that coming so close still bothered him.

A Search Across Canada

As the weeks turned into months, the RCMP could not assume that Reggie was still on Prince Edward Island.

Marc contacted RCMP detachments and provincial agencies across Canada looking for some indication that Reggie might have relocated. He checked possibilities such as whether Reggie might have gone to a province like Alberta, applied for social benefits, found work or otherwise left some trace that he was living somewhere else.

This was much more laborious in 2005 and 2006 than it would be today.

Marc remembered making telephone calls, leaving messages, waiting for people to call back and sometimes having to call repeatedly. That process was multiplied across provinces and territories and different agencies.

It consumed a tremendous amount of time.

When I interviewed him years later, Marc reflected on how different such an investigation might be today. Information that once required telephone calls to agencies across the country can now be much easier to obtain, while social media can sometimes provide indications that a missing person is still active.

None of those tools existed in their present form when Reggie disappeared.

Keeping Reggie’s Story Alive

Through the winter, Marc maintained contact with my father.

My father clearly respected him. In his own account of the search, he described Marc as “a credit to the force” and remembered the amount of time and effort he put into trying to find Reggie.

Marc also understood that, as the months passed, public attention to Reggie’s disappearance could fade.

He continued trying to keep Reggie’s story before the public.

In May 2006, those efforts resulted in renewed newspaper coverage. The Guardian published a story about Reggie’s disappearance as the six-month anniversary approached.

Within days, the search would change completely.