George Farris is looking forward to finally bringing his mother back home to Mill Bay.
The body of his mother Janet was recently found in her car at the bottom of Griffin Lake west of Revelstoke, on Highway 1, after she first went missing without a trace 27 years ago while travelling alone to a family wedding in Alberta.
Farris said his mother’s remains have been sent to a funeral home in Revelstoke where they will be cremated, and the family intends to inter them next to her husband’s remains in a church plot in Mill Bay when they are returned.
“It certainly means that we’re finally nearing the end of this story,” he said.
“We thought that maybe someday, we would finally find out what happened to my mother, but so much time had gone past that we were beginning to doubt that we ever would.”
After almost three decades of heartache and questions about Janet’s disappearance among the Farris family, she was finally found largely thanks to a 13-year-old boy and his GoPro.
READ MORE: Revelstoke RCMP solve 27-year-old cold case
George Farris said the family had assumed that the most likely scenario was that Janet had a car accident along the route to the wedding, and that she either had a medical emergency, fell asleep at the wheel, or tried to avoid hitting an animal or some other obstruction on the road.
“We walked great lengths of the highway at the time, along with Search and Rescue volunteers, looking for her, and a RCMP helicopter was in the sky looking as well,” he said.
“But there was a lot of territory to cover and we had no idea where we should be looking. Those lakes along the way can also be very deep, as was the lake they finally found her in.”
Farris said the Coroners Service is preparing a report on his mother’s death, and he has been told that it will take some time to complete.
“My brother (and only other sibling) lives in Thailand and he’s also very happy that mom has been found,” he said.
“Our thanks to everyone who made that possible.”
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