A4

Marty Klinkenberg

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It has been 17 years since Wilbur and Irene Beatrice Dedam lost their son in a car accident, but still, it hurts.

"It is a pain that will never heal," says Wilbur, the chief of the Esgenoopetitj First Nation.

Sitting at the dining room table in the house they have lived in for 34 years, the couple said Friday they understand the sadness that has gripped Pamela Fillier, the mother of missing teen Hilary Bonnell.

"I know how she must feel," Irene, a band councillor for 26 years, said. "The circumstances are different, but parents who have lost kids understand that pain."

It has been a tough two months for the residents of Esgenoopetitj, a Mi'kmaq community with 1,200 residents a half-hour north of Miramichi. A bubbly 16-year-old, Bonnell disappeared on the morning of Sept. 5, after sending a text message, terrified, to a friend.

Despite an extensive search, she has not been seen, nor heard from, since.

"Everybody here has been affected, not just her mother and her father," Irene said. "This involves our whole nation. When she went missing, everyone went out looking for her.

"Even now, it is hard to keep a day-to-day routine. You are always thinking about her."

Police searched properties in Esgenoopetitj and Tabusintac this week, but RCMP Insp. Roch Fortin refused to say if the actions were linked to the Bonnell case.

Fortin said Friday a ground search will be conducted in Tabusintac today, where forensic experts have been examining a garage for the past two days.

"It is part of the evidence-gathering that we are doing related to a major investigation," Fortin said.

"We are using all the tools available to us to do a very thorough property search.

"We are trying to do everything in our power to find evidence to support the search warrants that were executed. We are looking for anything that may help us out."

Police previously searched a bungalow on Highway 11 in Esgenoopetitj that Pamela Fillier said belongs to Christopher Bonnell, a member of the band council and Hilary's uncle. Fortin said earlier this week that both properties are owned by the same individual.

The yellow police tape that surrounded the house for several days was gone on Friday, and Fortin confirmed that the residence had been turned back over to its owner. Nobody answered the door in mid-afternoon, however.

The house is only two doors down from the 4 D's Grocery, a community gathering spot and the last place Hilary Bonnell was seen the morning she vanished.

Since 1995, the store has been operated by Wilbur and Irene Dedam.

"This is a small community, and it's the first time anything like this has ever happened here.," Irene said, "It is very hard. We know almost everybody here. We know almost all of the kids."

Irene Dedam said her two daughters have been searching for the teenager since "Day One." She has even joined them a few nights - it is easier for her than worrying about them until they get home.

Fearful, fewer people walk alone now on the streets in Esgenoopetitj.

"That is a good thing," she said.

The Dedams didn't know Hilary very well, although they would occasionally see her walking with a cousin. She lived on the First Nation with her aunt and was only a few minutes from home when she went missing.

It has left everyone in Esgenoopetitj, which used to be called Burnt Church, shaken.

"We are still hoping find the little one," Irene said. "Rain or shine or snow, we will still be out there looking.

"She has to come home, no matter what. Then her mother, and this reserve, can rest."

On Halloween night, the Dedams handed out 400 treat bags that it had taken them seven hours to fill.

They dressed in scary costumes and turned their home of more than three decades into a haunted house.

"It is only once a year that you do something like that, and the kids remember it for the rest of their life," Wilbur, who has served as the chief for a decade, said.

Soon, he and his wife will move out of their longtime home. They are having it razed, to make way for a new school.

"We are doing it for the children," Irene said.

There is one child missing from the First Nation, and her picture is on flyers in almost every business on the reserve and in neighbouring Neguac.

"It is too bad it has taken so long," said Wilbur, who has daughters and granddaughters and lost one son in a tragic accident. "I don't want to give up hope."

Marty Klinkenberg is contributing editor at the Telegraph-Journal. He can be reached at martyklinkenberg@hotmail.com.