Editorial: Where are Lyle and Marie McCann?

By Stephen Dafoe

It was exactly one month ago today that Lyle and Marie McCann’s motor home was found wedged in a cutline outside of Edson, roaring in flames. In the days and weeks that followed, headlines across the country were on fire with stories of the search for the missing St. Albert couple, last seen on security cameras gassing up their soon-to-be destroyed motor home July 3.

Exactly two weeks after that motor home was set ablaze police arrested Travis Edward Vader on unrelated charges, the culmination of a manhunt that began in earnest when Vader was reported to be a person of interest in the case three days earlier.

Three days, five days, two weeks, one month – all units of time our lives have passed through as summer moves towards fall. And while the plight of Lyle and Marie McCann has occupied the attention and concern of many of us off and on during the past month, even the most compassionate among us can not fully comprehend what it must be like for their son Brett McCann, their daughter Trudy Holder, their other children, their grand children or anyone else who knows the missing couple intimately. Only those nearest and dearest to them can truly know that void their absence has created or the mixture of fear, frustration and hope, always hope.

“I miss the way that my Mom holds my head very firmly with both hands and plants a big kiss on my lips,” wrote Trudy Holder on the family’s FaceBook page dedicated to trying to find the missing couple. “Smack. I think she does that so that there’s no possible way… I can miss the love and tenderness she feels for me.”

Nearly 40,000 people have shown their solidarity with the family by joining the Mccann family’s FaceBook page, some offering words of encouragement, others from across Canada keeping a porch light on day and night, a symbolic gesture to reinforce the hope that the McCanns will in fact come home soon.

And there is little any of us can do for the McCann family other than continue to hope, continue to encourage, continue to put up posters, continue to spread the word, all in the hopes that someone, somewhere has information to the one question that has been on the public’s mind for the past month. Where are Lyle and Marie McCann?

Related websites

Print Friendly, PDF & Email