Daniel St-Louis was in disbelief when his brother-in-law called him with the news last Sunday morning.
After 37 years
, his missing father’s vehicle was found deep in the river waters in Deux-Montagnes.
“I told him I didn’t believe it, but that I would still go,” St-Louis, 55, said in an interview with The Gazette on Friday.
Upon arriving near a boat drop along the Mille-Îles River, he saw a large deployment and he knew something big was underway. Even after seeing photos of a beige Jeep Cherokee Chief, the same car his dad drove, he still had his doubts.
But alongside the remains discovered in the vehicle, St-Louis said his father’s sunglasses were retrieved. A unique square, gold watch that his father inherited from his own dad was also recovered.
“It was really a mix of ‘I have to believe it’ and ‘This is real,’” St-Louis said. “Then again, it was like a bad nightmare.
“It’s an answer that we might not have wanted to receive, but in some way, we needed to have it.”
Robert St-Louis, the father of Daniel and his four sisters, vanished at the age of 42. The Laval man was last seen in June 1988.
At the time, Daniel St-Louis was 18 years old. They thought their dad was elsewhere for a few days as he would sometimes go for a break, he said. But after failing to come home, St-Louis said his mother contacted police.
“The police at the time didn’t take the disappearance seriously,” he said, noting police didn’t conduct searches in the beginning. There didn’t appear to be any criminal element tied to the case, he added.
Despite the family’s efforts, tips from the public and a possible match that
ended up being disproven
in recent years, they never saw Robert again.
It was one of Daniel St-Louis’s sisters who recently penned a touching letter about their father’s disappearance to the American non-profit Exploring with a Mission.
The diving team, composed of two volunteers, search waterways for missing individuals whose vehicles were never recovered
, under the assumption that the cars are likely submerged in bodies of water. Since 2023, they have found missing people in Australia, the U.S. and Canada.
Armed with a list of a dozen cold cases mapped out by region, Exploring with a Mission arrived in Quebec in early July. They found the remains in a vehicle believed to belong to Yvon Guévin, a 75-year-old former town councillor who was reported missing in 2014, in the St-François River.
With his sister’s help, St-Louis said the two-person team scanned the river. But it was near a drop closer to the Deux-Montages side where they found a few cars buried deep in the dark, choppy waters. They dove and identified the Jeep Cherokee Chief believed to belong to Robert last Saturday evening, he said. Bones were inside, too.
“No one is equipped like them,” St-Louis said. “It’s 3D sonar and all that. It’s incredible.”
Upon their discovery, the team contacted the authorities, he said. In the days that followed, Laval police have been very supportive of their family and authorities have kept them up to date on any developments, he added.
In an email Friday, Laval police told The Gazette that the investigation is ongoing and the department is still awaiting DNA results. A spokesperson for the Quebec coroner’s office also said the identity has not yet been confirmed.
As they await confirmation, the last week has been both difficult and much needed for Robert’s widow and five children. The exact cause of death must also be determined, but St-Louis said “everything seems to point” to suicide.
“We’re torn between the 37-year grief that’s coming out and also a little bit of satisfaction that, finally, we’re going to begin to be able to grieve,” St-Louis said.
Describing him as a strict and traditional man, St-Louis said his father was passionate about his work in the fur trade. He loved to go fishing with his son and he was very generous, he added.
“We were fishers,” he said. “So, practically every weekend we went fishing on the boat.”
Daniel St-Louis never got to introduce his wife or children to Robert, but they were all close with his father’s twin brother, who died a few years ago. But there are parts of Robert that lived on in other ways: Daniel has the same striking blue eyes, and likens his passion for work to his dad’s, saying this week it helped take care of his spirit. He also still loves to fish and share that with his grandsons.
The family is slowly starting to discuss how they will honour Robert’s life. They haven’t finalized plans, but they were thinking about how he was part of the Knights of Columbus and how to incorporate that, drinking a “big beautiful” pint of O’Keefe’s because that’s what he liked, “even if it wasn’t good,” St-Louis said, laughing.
—
with files from Jesse Feith of The Gazette
