But as time carried on, his behaviour became more erratic, and that's when we thought he was using drugs. I fought very hard to get him into a treatment centre, and he agreed. He did that, and from there he just said, "It's not working. Mom, I'm not using. You know, I smoke marijuana, it's nothing heavy." I continued to disbelieve him because of some of the things that were going on. He had called us and said that he was walking across a field carrying the cross of Jesus, and that he had holes in his hands, stigmata, I think is what he called it, and could we see it? It was very disturbing, because I couldn't see what he was talking about.

That started a little bit of a complication in his life. He later decided, with his arborist business, to move to BC, where he had a longer tree season. He left for BC in early 2019. He started out in Penticton, headed down to Oliver, and worked in the orchards there. Then he made his way to Nelson and the Kootenays. With all the trees, it was just a real place for him. We could hear the happiness in his voice. It was really where he needed to be, with the trees, the nature, the land, the water. Those things were very, very important to him, and it had all of that.

His mental health continued to really struggle, and privacy laws really get in the way for families, especially when your loved one turns adult age, depending on what province. I could never be part of any of his appointments unless he allowed it. That was a really, really big struggle. I fought hard to help advocate for him.

Along with that, in Nelson he became known as Dancing Chris. That was a way that he liked to express himself, and that was a really, really big thing. When we went to Nelson the first time after we reported him missing, we heard stories of his dancing and his presence within his community of vulnerable people. They really loved him, and that made us feel, I think, very happy under the circumstances.

We felt a lot of racism with the police in reporting him missing. Three days into that, they told me on the phone, and of course I couldn't see their facial expressions, so I probably shouldn't be making them, but it was really, you know, "He's probably wandered off into the bush and died." Literally dismissed us. I fought very, very hard, as well as our family, to have them treat this seriously.

We had one particular officer that, right off the bat, every time I tried to say who my son really was, ugh. "Well, that's not who he was," or "He was in trouble this day, this day, this month, this month." They already had a preconceived idea of who my son was. I kept pushing them, because Nelson is a very small community, and I felt that it needed some media presence other than the local newspaper or the Nelson police website. I said, "I really feel that the RCMP, there should be some sort of announcement on their website, something."

In the meantime, I went to Aboriginal Alert. What a fantastic organization. They're out at Enoch, I believe. They made posters for Christopher, and they stood beside us. They were sending out his poster, and every time I used social media to get his name out there, they were there, either making a comment or resharing. They're an incredible support, especially for families that just don't know what you're supposed to do. Are you supposed to print your own posters? At first, I think the perception is you report your loved one missing and then the police do everything for you. That is not the case. You have to be your own advocate. You have to push them. You have to be the ones putting out posters. We had to do all of that.

When we asked them, it took almost three months before they got it posted on the RCMP site. When it got posted, we were sent a link by the Nelson police, and when I opened that link, that's when I realized how my son was categorized. In most missing persons reports, they say that a loved one is missing. The police are concerned for the well-being of this loved one. That is not what was said here. It alluded to the fact that my son was a transient who lived in the wilderness and liked to be in the bush. It was just so derogatory. I called the Nelson police and said, "I want that taken down. That is just so wrong." In the meantime, they also updated their missing person page on the Nelson website to allude to the same thing. In addition to that, without telling us, they said his last known sighting was in a Walmart in 2023.

Yet, we as a family had gone around the community and asked people, particularly because they said they thought my son just wandered off into the bush and died. We got into our vehicle and drove to Nelson, and we started asking people. Through doing that, we started to find out the things that were going on, and I guess the racism, and the work that we needed to do to bring this all together, because they just weren't taking it seriously.

From there, we met with people within the local community. We asked as many questions as we could. I fought right from day one. I said, "If you think he went off into the bush and just died, then where are the cadaver dogs? Why aren't you out there searching?" I got every excuse on why they couldn't do it. Eventually I kept pushing, we wouldn't let it go, and finally they brought in, I believe it was an RCMP dog, to come in with an officer. Through that search, the dog did not alert at all in their targeted areas. While we were there, we met a gentleman who told us that he had dropped Christopher off three bus stops down on a highway outside of Nelson. So we hopped into the vehicle, we went three bus stops down, and there was a house.

Blayne: I really want to hone in on the fact that we were in Alberta. We made several trips out to Nelson. When we first realized they weren't taking this seriously, we needed boots on the ground. So we went down there, interjected ourselves at the police station, and made them see, "Hey, this is us." They started to take it a little more seriously. The dog that they brought in wasn't a...

Christine: It was, in all, we don't know the specific terms of it.

Blayne: But he wasn't a cadaver dog.

Christine: He was trained in all areas. He wasn't specific to that.

Blayne: Through the many multiple trips that we made down there, networking through the vulnerable houseless community, we started doing interviews with everyone there and started to gather information. That was incumbent on us and the police. We actually directed the police on how to do the investigation. We provided the witnesses, the statements. And mind you, Christine, with all of her advocacy for this, developed a huge social media following. There were thousands of people. I think there were three million visiting our site.

Christine: At one point.

Blayne: Six million views. We had hundreds of people just searching for Christopher. It was really amazing, to be honest with you.

Not to digress, but going back to the networking and interviewing people, Christine and Chris's sister were driving, and they stopped at the North Shore End and started just talking with somebody. Just by chance, this person said, "I know Chris. I dropped him off three times during the summer." So, number one, the summer of 2024 doesn't add up to the last person seen. There are multiple witnesses now who have come forward and said, "No, it's 2024," right? Anyways, we went to this property, and we called the police and said...

Christine: Because we were there when that dog was there, and we said, "Get a dog on that property." They brought a dog onto that property, and at that point in time we were told that there were no alerts.

Blayne: And if it wasn't for a certain constable who was instrumental. She was empathetic. She understood.

Christine: She was incredible. From Winnipeg.

Blayne: She really was instrumental in this, and we owe her a debt of gratitude, because she found a remain, a bone. She took a picture of it, and it went to Surrey or something. The anthropologists in the police department said, "No, it's an animal bone." She kept it. She bagged it up, and she actually drove it herself down to get it tested, and that's when they found out it was human remains.

Christine: Otherwise it would have just been dismissed.

Blayne: We owe her.

Christine: From there, I think there's a message in all of this: our loved ones matter, and we're often dismissed, and we have to fight so hard to be heard. We have to be our own advocates. We can't just sit back, because there's no traction if you're not pushing. It takes such a toll on everybody involved. There are financial repercussions, the travelling that we had to do. At one point in time we were introduced to FILU, the Family Information Liaison Unit, who were incredible, and still are incredible, in supporting our family. But when you don't know this, you know, we were writing to ministers. I was reaching out to as many people as I could. I was following other mothers and families in the very same situation. I have to say, Krista Fox is a huge advocate for missing and murdered and exploited Indigenous people. Without the family support, we're all going through these tragic ordeals where our loved ones are missing, or their lives have been stolen, and we are just left treading water. When you're going through all this grief, you have no idea where to turn. There's no roadmap. We're just left.

I believe the most significant thing for us, so that Christopher wasn't forgotten, was telling his story, who he was. By posting pictures and saying, "Hey, this is my boy," and talking about the lead-up to his going missing, and talking about his childhood years and who he was, it really gave him an identity, rather than, for lack of a better term, just another missing person.

I feel that we as families have to do so much of that advocating ourselves, and there's such a prevalence of bias towards our people. I felt it myself personally as Christopher's mom through this journey. That can't happen. Through our story and Christopher's story, what I've been doing on social media, and I keep saying "I," I'm sorry, we and our family keep doing is being very vulnerable ourselves, sharing our stories, and being that advocate, championing our missing and murdered men and boys. They matter. June 6th is such an important day to bring that awareness. We don't talk about the Starlight Tours, the things that have happened, what happened to my son, where they walked away after the remains were found. We were told they were on the property for what we believe was around eight hours.

Blayne: Six, eight.

Christine: Six to eight hours, and they deemed it non-suspicious, non-criminal, and walked away.

I think another thing that they don't share is that tremendous amount of grief, the ups and downs through these types of things, because what do you do when they walk away? Where do you go next? I just started writing letters to ministers. I started putting things on social media. I started this big outcry, like, somebody out there, please help. By talking about Christopher, about who he was, I think there was a lot of compassion brought around that, because he's not just another Indigenous missing man. He had a life. He just deserved to be here, and his life was cut short.

Through all of that, we got together and we fought to get on that property. We had volunteers, an amazing canine unit with amazing... Sorry, I'm really accentuating it because it's so important. They were just incredible people standing beside us with these dogs, searching that property, and we found more of my son's remains. They walked away, and more of my son was there. At the end of the day, they called it. They couldn't do any more as dog handlers with their canines at that point in time, and I was so crushed.

Blayne: We went onto that property with our own volunteers, providing the resources for these people to stay in places, for the K-9 teams to come in to do this. Multiple volunteers. At one time we had ten volunteers sifting through all of this ridiculous stuff, sifting, searching, finding. And we did.

Christine: And that should never be left to a family. I think that's part of why his story needs to be told. No family should be abandoned like that and have to do that. I held a piece of my son in my hand. No mother, no father, no brother, no sister, no family member, no friend should have to be digging through soil and building our own sifts to find my boy. My boy deserved to come home, and he deserved to be sent to the spirit world. My big thing was that, with him scattered everywhere, maybe he wouldn't be able to find his way home. It was so important to get onto that property.

We were so lucky that we met an Indigenous police officer from Cranbrook, from their Indigenous policing department. They don't have one in Nelson, and they don't have a lot of them, I believe, across Canada. I think it's important, and I really do believe that the RCMP need to look at that, but that's a whole other story.

He was just incredible. His support, I think that's where the lack of trust with the authorities came back, because he understood when I said, "My son is scattered on this property, and I don't even know if he's going to be able to make his journey home. I can't do a proper ceremony for him, I can't do anything." He understood what I meant. He knew what I was talking about.

When we were told originally that we couldn't smudge on the property or lay tobacco, I was just, who makes these decisions? We did. We had two women come from FILU and do smudge and prayer and those sorts of things, because that matters. Why should what I believe be dismissed? Why is that not important, what my son believed? My son was incredibly spiritual. He's the one that kept telling me, "Mom, we need to do more for the land, for nature." He pushed that more than I did.

Blayne: I think the corporal that we had, because every time we went on site we requested him to be there through FILU, and they granted us that, so he was there to ensure the owner of the property was secured for us. Any evidence that we found, he could handle that part of it, in terms of turning it over to the local detachment. We found a lot. A lot of things on that property. What it affirmed is this, and I'll just say this real quick. Because Christopher was houseless, mentally unstable, schizophrenic, an addict, he was deemed less important, we believe, to be...

Christine: Four. He had four things. And you know, I don't like to use the word addict. A substance use disorder. He was a diagnosed schizophrenic. I started talking about that earlier, about the changes in his behaviour. He was clinically diagnosed. That doesn't change... It's not like he wasn't able to function.

Blayne: But Christine didn't know about the diagnosis. Christopher never told us.

Christine: Again, with the privacy laws.

Blayne: So when we look back at some of the behaviour he was showing in his younger years, there's a reason why, and we weren't aware of that. When Christine advocates for family members to be part of mental health, the diagnosis and the treatment, it's for a valid reason. If family members who love their children, or any type of family members, can't be a part of that or don't even know about it, then situations like what we're going through develop. People go right away to the drugs and stuff like that, and it's not that. But I do want to surmise this: how he was not taken seriously in the missing persons report, how we had to go to Nelson, I think we went there nine times, to provide the resources for the on-site searches and sifting, the equipment, housing. It cost us a lot of resources. It cost us a lot of resources.

Christine: It can't happen. It can't be abandoned. We just can't be abandoned. What about the families that are living in communities way up north, and their loved one is maybe on the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver, or something happens to who knows? They don't have the resources to get there. We did a GoFundMe, and we were lucky that FILU does offer support in certain areas, but it takes time. We had to leave our jobs, and it's all advocacy by family. Otherwise, how do you get your loved one's name out there, that this matters, that this is important, so this doesn't happen to anybody else? That's been my biggest thing. I can't bring back my Christopher. What was done to him was wrong, and we are fighting for justice. It is an open investigation, so there are things we can't speak of today.

Blayne: And the only reason it's open now is because we pushed it to be. We are the ones that found everything, and the constable who kept the remains and put them in. Without those interjections, we wouldn't be where we're at.

I just want to say, if you've got families that have missing people, and they don't have, we call it how it is, the financial resources to pursue it, then this is what I believe the system is designed for. They say, "I can't, I don't have the money to go here and here, I don't have the money to hire volunteers to do this." The system is designed for that, as part of the failure system, so people can't pursue their loved ones because they don't have the resources. The police were useless. They say they don't have resources, they don't have people specific to missing people. The people that were assigned to our case were juniors. They didn't have any experience in missing people. Lack of resources. If you don't have, as a family, as an individual, the resources to find the people that you love that are missing, then it gets lost in the system. I believe that's what it's designed for.

Christine advocated on social media, I'll say this. Number one, getting in the face of the police, making them realize we're not going away. Developing a social media platform that expands to everybody, to understand the condition, to empathize, to have compassion, to say, "This is the reason why. This is him as a human being." Then advocacy in the government and the systems that are supposed to protect us. That was a whole new battle, but we got some help from an MLA, we got some help from the ministers, and it was finally pushed to look at the investigation again. Then they opened it again.

Christine: Well, with...

Blayne: They opened it to be an ongoing investigation. If you look at it from the start, like I just mentioned, all those things, if you don't do that, I think you're lost. They're not going to be advocating for it. I'm not going to say much more than this: if you're mentally unstable, if you're struggling with substance use, if you're houseless, if you're Indigenous, those are all strikes against you.

It's been a long journey. We're not finished. We will not stop until we have justice, answers. The toll it's taken on Christine and our family has been astronomical, when you have to create and build sifting machines and sift for your own child. That takes on a whole new level of horror. A whole new level of horror.

Christine: And no one should ever, ever have to do that.

Blayne: But the thing is, we wouldn't be here if it was done properly in the first place. If the investigation was done properly, if they didn't deem it a certain way and actually went through the proper process.

Christine: I also believe it has a lot to do with, right off the bat, I think Christopher had friends and people that loved him within the community of Nelson, and we feel that love. But he was everything that the community doesn't want, some of it. He was incredibly proud to be Indigenous, and he showed it through his dance, through just everything. He had a substance use disorder, and he chose to live outdoors. That was by choice. We got him an apartment one time, and he just liked to be outside. I always thought, how naive I was, when I look back at myself, to think that he would just be okay. But we don't know what happened to him. That's part of the investigation. We don't know when he passed away. That was stolen from me, that was taken from me. I will never know when my son died. The coroner's report uses his last CCTV footage of December 24th, 2023, as his date of death. I refuse to accept that, and I have told that to the investigators. That also was stolen from me. My son. I do not know how he died or the date he died. I don't know any of that, and because of the condition of his remains, we will never know. That was taken.

Our loved ones matter. We're not just people to be dismissed or stereotyped or assumptions made. When you're scrolling past missing posters, and it's identifiably an Indigenous person, it's dismissed. I've felt it. That's why, again, I'm reiterating that it is so important for us as families to stick together, for our voices to be heard, for our stories to be told, for our loved ones to be more than a missing poster, or an emblem of a red dress or a jean jacket or any of those things. They mattered, and that can't be lost. No family should ever have to go through this. Ever.

I guess I was incredibly naive to think that the day I called and reported my son missing, it would just be like what I watch on TV. And it's not. Not at all. Right?

Blayne: Yeah, there's really not a handbook out there, like Christine said, for anyone to deal with this. Although we know enough in our situation to build one.

Christine: And it shouldn't be...

Blayne: Because we have created a handbook.

Christine: We should be able to trust the systems that are put in place. We tell the investigators now, "We don't trust you. What we've been through, and what my son went through before, we do not trust you. You have to earn our trust." To be walked away from, to be hung up on. I've written stories about that. I had an RCMP officer, when I said, "If this was a blond-haired, blue-eyed university student, and I was a prominent member of your town, would you have walked away?" Anyhow, not by me. That was in July of 2025. We did not hear from another police officer, other than the Indigenous police officer that was there through FILU. No contact, no phone call, nothing.

Blayne: Do you want to make any contact with us? Just dry.

Christine: Nothing.

Blayne: When that occurred, it really strengthened our resolve, because we're not going to let that happen. I don't let them get away with that either.

Christine: But you feel so abandoned. We're not investigators, we're not police officers. There's so much burden put on families through this, and we're already reeling with the loss. There are two sides of loss. When they're missing, I described it as a tightrope. I felt like I was walking on this really thin rope that at any time I could fall off on the side of complete loss or hope. I didn't know what was going to happen. I didn't know if he'd just show up one day. I think I knew. Looking back, I knew. But there was still that hope. And then when that hope was taken... We had to fight to be taken seriously, that my boy mattered. It was so devastating.

Again, that's why I want our stories to be told, so that people understand things have to change. I don't know what the answer is, but our stories need to be told, our voices need to be heard. Things need to change.

Blayne: Well, I think you've created some of this, with privacy changes, systematic changes, how the RCMP and any police service has to deal with missing persons and recovery. There are a lot of gaps. A lot of gaps, and we know the gaps, but it's a big machine. Fight it one at a time.

The worst part, too, is that even when we said to the police, "Okay, what happens now? He's missing," they were dumbfounded. It's like, what is the playbook? You should be providing people with an avenue, a path forward. Here's a handbook, or some type of scenario: here's all the information for you, here's what we're doing, here are the resources that can help you. Listing multiple resources, like counselling or support groups or even money. And it's not. You're just on your own.

Christine: I should back up, because there's part of this that we haven't talked about. My son was in the Okanagan Correctional Centre for a period of time. Part of his schizophrenia, when he would go into psychosis, is he would take cars. He didn't do it with the intent of selling.

Blayne: Just driving around downtown.

Christine: Right. But there are consequences, so he would spend very short periods of time in OCC.

Blayne: But on the mental health side.

Christine: When he was released, we talked to him the day before, and he was so happy. He was talking about coming home, which he hadn't done in a long time. That was December 10th. He talked to us on December 11th. He was driven from the Okanagan Correctional Centre in Oliver to Nelson. He attended court at 9:30 in the morning, and he was released with no medication. He was on prescribed antipsychotics. I don't know exactly what they were, but it was for his illness, every month.

Blayne: And he had a depot shot, meaning every month he had to go get a shot. Upon his release, that was no more.

Christine: So the mental health system didn't catch him on that side. He was released wearing a light jacket.

Blayne: Runners. Summer clothing. And it was -20, -22, I think.

Christine: Yes, I can't remember the temperature, but it was cold. We talk about funding and resources and things like that, too. The place that he used to call me from, with his mental illness, he didn't like to have phones or anything as it progressed, so he would call me from the local shelter. But their funding was dropped, so their drop-in wasn't available, and he had no place to call. They just released him: "You don't matter. There you go, go figure it out." He had eighty-five dollars in his pocket. He had his bank card and what Blayne described as his clothing. Then he was just sent out with no place to go.

Blayne: And it's interesting, because before he went to the OCC and the mental health wing, there were resources available. There were several places that were still open, and then when he got out, because of the funding, those places shut down.

Christine: He was a creature of habit as well. It was just part of his thing, right? So he had no place to go, and then...

Blayne: I said it's a lot of gaps. A lot of gaps, and it's societal. When you're in that state, especially when he would go into psychosis, they just can't think for themselves. They just can't. We witnessed it, we're part of it. They're just left to their own demise, right? It's strange, but all of the evidence we've heard with meth is that it quiets the noise in their head. It's almost designed for this. A lot of gaps, a lot of things that nobody should go through, and hopefully there'll be some change, because we're not done with this. We've got a long road ahead of us.

Christine: None of this defines who Christopher is, either. We can't lose the fact that he's loved, regardless of his circumstances, his mental illness, his schizophrenia, his substance use. That doesn't matter. He was still my child, and I loved him unconditionally. He was taken from me, and like I said earlier, I will never know the day he died or how he died, because of the condition of his remains.