Katrina Blagdon: Fourteen Days Gone

 

As John Simpson prepared himself for a return to British Columbia to retrieve the ashes of his beloved daughter Ashley, another women's family began a frantic search for their own missing loved one right in John's own backyard. 

Trina Blagdon was reported missing on New Year's Day. She is 37, the same age Ashley would be if she hadn't been murdered six years earlier in the small town of Salmon Arm. John couldn't help but notice the similarities between the two women. Ashley was raised in rough places, in logging and fishing camps across the country working as an assistant to her dad who is cook. She knew how to live in the wilderness, and survive in the elements. 

Trina is a military vet who retired in 2016 as a M/Cpl after 14 years in the Army. She had proudly fought in Afghanistan, and there wasn't much she hadn't seen in her young life. So going missing on New Year's was alarming for her family. People like Ashley and Trina don't vanish into thin air.

It's been a week since John brought Ashley home in an urn, and it has been 14 days since Trina disappeared from his home community of St. Catharines, Ontario. She was last seen on New Year's Eve after visiting a fast food joint. Police believe she is travelling on foot. 

After a short family grieving time, John knew what he had to do. He got on social media to round up anyone who would join him to look for Trina in the Niagara area. Then he put on his boots, and heavy coat, and went out looking for her himself.

"We know what it's like and we want to help," he says. "We want to help people out of that situation and bring families closure."

John knows first hand what it's like for a family when the search and rescue forces go home. Just days after Ashley disappeared, officials ended their rescue attempts and it was left to the family to travel to Salmon Arm, right across the country from their home in Niagara, to look for her. John went back several times, so did Ashley's sister Amanda and her friends. The search for Ashley nearly killed him, and certainly caused financial hardship for the family. 

He doesn't want anyone to relive his horror story, so he is dedicating the rest of his life to helping raise awareness, and funds, to aid in the search for the missing. 

And he wants people to know that governments need to know better, and do better in supporting the families. John was cut off Employment Insurance because of a provision which deemed him ineligible for support because he had to leave the province to look for his daughter. It was a cruel blow but he had to soldier on to find his daughter. 

It took six years before Ashley's body was located by hunters in the wilderness not far from the home she shared with her boyfriend, Derek Favel who is due in court on January 18, charged with her murder.

Six years of excruciating pain, always wondering, always fearful when the telephone rings. 

"It's hard to wonder how, as you're grieving and trying to find your lost child, how you're going to pay the rent because you're not working any more and put food on the table for the rest of the family.

"What stops a country from trying to find its citizens who have gone missing?" he asked a reporter recently. 

John only received government assistance after Ashley's body was found.

Today, his grief is as profound as it has ever been. And so he takes some comfort in knowing that he is doing something to help Trina's family.

So tonight, once again, he is meeting some mates and putting together a plan to locate her.

He has learned the hard lesson as part of the club no one wants to join.

The love has to go somewhere.