Family of missing Vancouver Island man hold onto hope with cave photos, video, candy wrappers
Credit to Author: David Carrigg| Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 16:04:36 +0000
FLORES ISLAND — Ten-year-old Jacquine Thomas walks alone on the grey potholed main street of Ahousaht, off the mid-west coast of Vancouver Island, clutching a toy in his right hand.
He looks a lot like his dad, with broad features and high cheekbones, but late on this wet fall day he lacks the wide smile that Travis Thomas is so well known for.
Half an hour earlier, Jacquine’s great-grandfather, grandmother, two great aunts, auntie and half-brother had returned from Little Bartlett Island, 20 minutes away by boat, where they had spent another day searching for Travis, missing since Aug. 7, 2018.
Travis — a father of four — was once the community’s star athlete and had taken on leadership, youth mentorship and territory guardianship roles in Ahousaht.
“In my heart I know he’s still alive,” says Travis’s mom Jean, standing by a fire in the forest near the little island’s north beach. “He’s in the middle of both worlds it seems.”
Travis’s second eldest, 19-year-old Shandon, says he misses everything about his dad, as he spends another day on the front line of the search.
Though Travis disappeared on Bartlett Island, his family have narrowed their search to Little Bartlett, on the west side of the big island — you can walk between the two at low tide.
Travis Thomas sits with his wife Jill Swan. Thomas is now missing, while Swan is deceased.
It’s there they have seen the most recent signs that make them believe Travis is alive but in hiding on the island — from family photographs and a cross stashed in a small dry cave in early September, to wrappers found discarded after candy was left on the island following Halloween.
The family has erected a framed tarp shelter in the forest at the edge of the beach, with a generator alongside it, and there is a large stockpile of firewood. They leave clothes in the shelter and outside there’s a closed metal box where they place food for Travis. Oftentimes, the food has been taken.
Parts of small animals and signs of fire have appeared and the family say they have seen glimpses of Travis as he moves about the island. An infrared video, shot in September from a boat off the small island, shows a white light in a gully. In October, a figure was seen standing on the high point of the little island above a cave where the family photos and red cross had been found.
Shandon Thomas, 19, with girlfriend Chantelle, 18, on Little Bartlett Island earlier this month.
The Ahousaht First Nation is the largest of 14 bands within the Nuu Chah Nulth Tribal Council, with about half of its 2,400 members living in Ahousaht on Flores Island — accessible only by water taxi and float plane, primarily from Tofino.
Within their traditional territory is remote Bartlett Island, about the size of Stanley Park and roughly halfway between Flores and Vargas islands. The islands are craggy rock with dense coniferous forest growing to the shorelines, and stretches of sandy beaches between. There’s abundant seafood (mussels, chitons, urchins, Dungeness and rock crabs) and berries by the shoreline in summer and roots year-round.
According to local historian John Frank, Bartlett was a burial site for Ahousaht’s top whalers.
Frank says the whalers spent part of the year on Catface Mountain on Vancouver Island, looking west over Clayoquot Sound to Bartlett Island and beyond, praying and preparing for their catch. Whalers used harpoons (with shell tips and pine tar bonding), sealskin floats and a spear for the final blow in their capture. The last whale butchered on the island was in the 1850s
The island has been used for eons by the Ahousaht, mostly in summer, to camp, gather seafood and seek solitude, while always avoiding the high point where the whalers are buried.
According to Frank, in 2009 band member Milton Sam, who had been jailed several times, was sent to the island by the community in an effort to help him get away from his troubles and reconnect with nature and himself. It worked, says Frank, and since then — until Travis disappeared — about 20 band members have gone to the island for a variety of reasons for different periods of time, with support from the band’s cultural support workers and family.
These stays on the island are based on a traditional vision quest, where members go to a remote spot to fast, pray and purify — usually in nearby oceans, rivers or lakes.
The view north from Little Bartlett, where Travis Thomas has been missing since August 2018.
Jean Thomas says the decision to take Travis to Bartlett was made when she found her son, then 40, passed out on the side of a road in Ahousaht. It was Tuesday, July 31, 2018.
Travis’s life had changed dramatically and quickly. He had gone from prominent community athlete, youth mentor, trail builder and warrior to a recent widower struggling with psychosis and alcohol abuse.
He went to elementary and high school within the Ahousaht Education Authority, which meets B.C.’s prescribed curriculum but has a focus on Nuu Chah Nulth language, culture and food. He had completed an ecotourism diploma, coached basketball at Maaqtusiis secondary in Ahousaht and worked as a guide on the Wild Side Trail on Flores Island.
Travis had also completed several survival courses, including on Bartlett Island, where he was able to hide from the instructors without being found.
Ahousaht’s elected Chief Greg Louie was once the principal of Maaqtusiis secondary and remembers Travis fondly.
“He was very strong, athletic and did well in school,” Louie says. “He got into youth basketball coaching, too, and his teams did very well. He had a good rapport with the kids and brought them to championships.”
Travis was hit hard, however, by the death of his wife, Jillian Swan, in October 2017 at age 27. According to the B.C. Coroners Service the investigation into her death is still open.
In happier times, Travis Thomas sits with his wife Jill Swan, who is now deceased, and their children Eva and Jacquine.
Jillian was the mother of his two youngest — Jacquine and eight-year-old Eva, who now live with Travis’s mother Jean and her husband. Travis’s eldest son, Dominic, lives in Ahousaht, while Shandon lives near Bamfield. Both boys played basketball in high school under their dad’s number 14. Local historian Frank jokes that “basketball is religion” in Ahousat.
Jean recalls Jacquine’s tears on the night last June when the Toronto Raptors won the NBA championship — the pair had spent many nights together watching basketball.
“He’s had a drinking problem for a few years now and the first time he had an (psychotic) episode was a couple of years ago,” says Jean. “He drove from Tofino to Vancouver in an episode. He was going 120 on the highway, he thought people were after him, that they were after his kids. He thought there were people under his car — paranoid psychosis they called it.
“When I asked for help was when he was passed out on the road in Ahousaht and I thought he was dead.”
Jean says she reached out to other band members on Ahousaht — a “cry for help” — and on that day, with the support of the band’s secret society (called the Witwok and comprised of elders) Travis was taken by boat to the island. She says her earlier efforts to get Travis into treatment had failed because it was Travis who needed to sign up.
A tent was set up for Travis on the forested edge of the sandy beach on the southeast side of the island, where the whales used to be butchered, and he was given food and water and supported for the first day by a family friend.
There was another band member on the north end of the island on a similar solitary stay.
For a week, family members checked in on Travis from the water, and he was in contact with Richard Thomas, the other man on the island. On Aug. 7, 2018, a week after he was dropped off, Thomas reported to people dropping off more food and supplies for Travis that he had not seen him that day.
Alfred Dick has been part of the search for Travis Thomas since he went missing on Bartlett Island on Aug. 7, 2018.
Ahousaht boatman Alfred Dick has been on the water and island “more days than not” since Aug. 7, 2018. In that time there have been five formal searches involving police and search and rescue crews, while family and friends have gone out to the island at least twice a week, stopping only when storm systems move through.
The first co-ordinated search began Aug. 9, 2018 — though family and friends were already scouring the island paths — and included Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue, an RCMP helicopter, Ahousaht Search and Rescue, Tofino Search and Rescue and the RCMP dog service. The Canadian Coast Guard were also involved for a day.
It came at a tough time for local search and rescue crews: Father-of-two Richard Amos disappeared from Ahousaht on July 22, 2018, when he went fishing alone in a canoe that day and never returned, while three Tla-o-qui-aht fishers were lost on June 15, 2018, when their boat capsized off Tofino. Only one body was recovered.
The second search for Travis occurred a few weeks later when the RCMP’s dog team returned to the island. Trail cameras were also installed.
On Oct. 18, 2018, a “community search day” was held involving 200 searchers and 20 boats, and on Aug. 23 and 24 of this year the RCMP again visited the island, bringing a cadaver dog that turned up nothing.
According to B.C. RCMP spokesman Cpl. Chris Manseau there is still an active and ongoing investigation into the whereabouts of Travis.
The last full-scale search was conducted over three days in late August and again involved police, dozens of volunteers and search and rescue staff. During the search volunteers went deep into the forest, leading to injuries to three Comox Search and Rescue volunteers and one from Ahousaht Search and Rescue.
Travis Thomas played with the Maaqusiis Suns men’s basketball team.
The islands, being a mix of glacial and volcanic rocks, are full of crevices and caves. The roots of the big trees weave their way into the rock and stretches of moss often cover holes beneath. Most of the injuries occurred when volunteers walked on what they thought was solid ground.
But it was during this last search that a significant find was made.
In a cave, with an oval entrance and almost vertical walls, getting tighter the deeper you go in, was found a red cross and several family photos and letters that had been placed around the island in plastic covers. To get into the cave you need to crawl. It’s dry and warm inside, with no spiderwebs.
The discovery led to renewed hope for the family.
“They weren’t just thrown in there,” says Dick, referring to the pictures. “They were set up in such a way that he could look at them.”
Bolstering hope, in late October Corissa Campbell, her husband Gord and another friend saw a figure on the highest point of Little Bartlett, above the cave in mid afternoon. They are family friends and go to the island regularly. It was Corissa who captured the white light on the island on video.
“We were all at camp at the fire so we just sat hoping he would move closer, but he just watched us from the top of the hill,” Corissa says. Then he disappeared.
A red cross and family photos placed on Bartlett Island for missing man Travis Thomas were found inside a small and dry cave in late August.
All of Travis’s children have come to Bartlett during searches. On the plastic sheet that serves as a windbreak on the east side of the family’s big fire, is written: “Come home dad, from Eva March 23, 2019”
On Nov. 9, Shandon had come out with girlfriend Chantelle, 18, on board his 82-year-old grandfather Louie Thomas’s boat. This boat is small enough to get close to the shore on the sandy north side of Little Bartlett. However, larger boats like that owned by Dick must idle alongside the slippery rocks on the south side to drop off and pick up passengers.
Also on the search were Jean, Travis’s sister Adrienne and his aunties Carol and Michelle.
Family of Travis Thomas take a break at their campsite after searching for Travis on Little Bartlett Island earlier this month. Pictured from front to back are Adrienne Thomas, Carol Thomas, Michelle Thomas and Louie Thomas.
They take an inventory of what food and clothes have been taken from inside the shelter, then walk the island looking for clues.
“We found wrappers today, and he likes those granola bars we leave him,” says Jean, referring to the wrappers that were found around the site that morning, after the food was placed in the shelter following Halloween.
Adrienne Thomas holds candy wrappers found on Little Bartlett Island earlier this month. The family of Travis Thomas believe he left the wrappers.
“There are his clothes. We have an inventory of what’s there and right now we are missing a black shirt, white shirt and black sweats. He’s on Little Bartlett in the underground burrows. He has a big beard. We’ve seen him. Saw him last Sunday. My sister seen a hand over there.”
Jean acknowledges there are people who don’t believe Travis is alive. But she says she has seen too many signs to lose hope.
“There is a dim flashlight we’ve seen. He has a radio, too. We can here the VHF sometimes. If somebody loses something he picks it up right away. My brother fell on that side (pointing west) and lost his glasses. We never found them, so Travis has those glasses now. They have the same prescription.”
When family went to the island on Nov. 19, they found another cave that had two sandwich bags and an orange peel — taken from the food box.
Travis’s sister Adrienne, who studies in Nanaimo but still comes out as often as she can, says that twice she and her mom have been separated from Travis only by a bush.
“I’ve seen enough of Bartlett Island to last a lifetime,” she says.
Jean believes Travis is still in the grips of psychosis and that’s why he is evading his family and a return to Ahousaht.
Jean Thomas holds a photo of her grandson Shandon Thomas inside a shelter on Little Bartlett Island. Family photos have been left in the tent in a bid to draw Travis Thomas out of hiding.
For Chief Louie, the search for Travis is ongoing, but has also become a tale of caution for the community.
“The lesson learned for Ahousaht is to see that times have changed from where a person was taken straight to the island, to having a greater sensitivity around mental health,” he says. “Unfortunately, we are learning from Travis.”
It is unlikely another band member will be placed on the island to help recovery, Louie says, and in spring 2020 a Wellness Centre will open in Ahousaht offering emergency detox and mental health services, backed by traditional cultural practices.
When Jean found Travis by the side of the road that day in 2018, there were no on-island detox services available to the family. The nearest recovery centre was in Port Alberni and you were only permitted to check in once you had been dry for a period of time.
“It’s going to make a huge difference,” Louie says.
The First Nations Health Authority said in a prepared statement: “The FNHA previously provided cultural and mental health supports to those involved in the search for Travis Thomas.”
Travis turns 42 on Dec. 23, and the family want him out of the island by then, before the big storms come.
As Dick’s boat slowly moves away from the island, with Jean, Adrienne, Michelle and Carol onboard, Michelle looks toward the forest and calls out in a gentle voice.
“Goodbye Travis, good night, see you tomorrow.”
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