I said, "What's going on?" 

They said, "We got somebody that's got a gun." 

I said, "Somebody that's got a gun? Who would that be? Can you tell me?" 

They said, "Yeah, it's actually Josh Cheecham." 

I said, "Hey, wait a minute, that's my son. He doesn't own a gun." 

“We were told they got a 911 call that he was threatening people's lives.”

I said, "Threatening people's lives? He doesn't even own a gun." 

They said, "We're asking you to leave the premises so we can have a search around." 

I said, "Okay, fine." I got his son up, and we left. After that, there was nothing. We never heard anything from the RCMP. The whole day went by. That would have been Sunday morning. No word from my son Josh. 

Jen called and said, "Did you hear from Josh?" 

I said, "No. He was here, but then the police were here, and I don't know where or what."

Jennifer: I came over to your house. I was waiting for the kids to get home. I don't even remember what I was doing on Sunday. Monday, I was texting people, my uncle and my brother Jeffrey, asking, "Have you heard from Josh since Sunday?" My older brother said he's probably at somebody's house, and one of my uncles said the same. After Monday came along, I knew. He would have already shown up at her house or mine. I kept asking, "Did he show up yet? Did he show up yet?" And Monday came.

Judy: The following morning, Monday, I just had a gut feeling something was wrong. I went to the office and told them he was missing. They put a bulletin out on the nation page saying if anybody had seen Josh, to contact the band office. Nobody saw him. There was word that he was seen here or there, but when they asked me, I said no, because he was in the yard still. I actually have video of him in the yard until after twelve o'clock, because I never got this knock at the door until about twelve thirty, maybe one o'clock. I don't know where they got these stories that he was out and about. We called 911 to report him missing, and they said they'd send somebody out to have a word with us.

I went home and waited. The kids were at school. His uncle came first and said, "Which way did Josh go?" 

I said, "He went that way. You'll see his tracks." 

He went following the tracks. Then his brother Jeffrey came. He said, "Mom, which way did Josh go?" 

I said, "He went that way, but your uncle's in front of you. He's gone that way too." 

He said, "Okay, I'm going to go with Uncle and check it out." 

I said, "Make sure you phone." 

He said, "Yeah, Mom, we'll give you a call."

Jennifer: Jeff came to my house first. He said, "Did they find Josh yet?" 

I said, "Nope." 

He said, "Well, I'm going to go to Mom's." 

Once he left, I came over, but he was already gone looking for him.

Judy: We were waiting for the kids to get off the bus. The kids got off the bus and went into their rooms, and we were sitting there talking. All of a sudden the phone rang. I looked at Jen, and Jen said, "It's Jeff, right?" 

I said, "Yeah, it's Jeff." 

We both smiled and looked at each other. I put him on speakerphone so we could hear at the same time. 

I said, "You found..." 

He goes, "Yeah." Then there was a pause. 

I said, "Jeff, what do you mean you found him?" 

He paused again and said, "Mom, he's gone." 

I said, "What do you mean, gone?" 

Then Jen dropped to her knees and screamed and hollered. 

I said, "My girl, the kids are here. We have to keep our composure here, so the kids don't know what's going on."

Jennifer: I had to go outside, because I wanted to puke. I had ringing in my ears. I couldn't hear anything around me, but I kept looking at her. Then the kids came out of the bedroom and looked at me and at my mom. 

They said, "What happened to Uncle Jeff? What happened to Uncle Jeff?" 

That's when my heart just sunk and dropped, because little did they know it wasn't their uncle, it was their daddy.

Judy: I said to her, "Let's go to Neil's." 

I went to my nephew's house. When we walked in, I said, "Have you heard?" 

He looked up and shook his head yes. I said, "The kids don't know anything." They kept asking again, "What happened to Uncle?" 

I said, "Nothing happened. Uncle's fine."

They said, "Grandma, I heard you saying Uncle Jeff, Uncle Jeff." 

I said, "Nothing's wrong with Uncle Jeff. I swear, nothing's wrong." 

They kept saying, "Promise, Grandma, nothing's wrong with Uncle Jeff." 

I said, "No, nothing's wrong with Uncle Jeff."

I went into the other room and called 911 to give them the information. 

I said, "Just to let you guys know, my son's been found." 

She said, "Well, that's good. He's found." 

I said, "Well, it's good in a way, but it's bad in a way." 

She said, "What do you mean?" 

I said, "His brother found him deceased." 

She said, "What? Where?" 

I said, "In the bush. You guys were supposed to come out. Have somebody come out. I can't talk anymore. I just want to give you the information that he's been found." I hung up, and I never even heard from the police. Nothing came from them.

Later that night, his uncle went back, and they tried to drag him, or remove his body, out of the bush in just the black bag that they put bodies in. They never even called Search and Rescue to retrieve the body. They never called anybody. They were handling it themselves. 

Somebody said, "No, you're not taking him like that." 

His uncle said, "I'll go get a sled, and you can put his body in the sled."

Jennifer: Drag him out like an animal, he said.

Judy: He said, "He's not an animal. You're not dragging him like that."

Jennifer: They were ready to throw his body in the box of the police truck, too.

Judy: He said, "No, you're not doing that. He's not an animal. He can go in the backseat." 

They said, "Well, we have stuff in there." 

He said, "Put your stuff in the backseat." 

I can't say if they put him in the back of the truck or in the back seat, but they did get him out of the bush. Then they were waiting for the hearse to come pick him up. They were waiting down Amical Road, and they were all blocked in. They had one truck in the middle and all the trucks around, waiting for the hearse. Other than that, we didn't hear anything. Nobody was informing us. 

Then I was at Jen's house, and they called me and said, "Can we come and speak with you?" 

I said, "Yeah, not a problem." 

They said, "When did your son leave?" 

I said, "You guys should know all that. You were informed. You were the ones that chased him into the bush. Yeah, maybe he shouldn't have gone so far, but he went in the bush. You guys let him go that way."

They were there for I don't know how long. I asked why Search and Rescue wasn't out. They couldn't give me an answer for that. I asked why the dogs weren't out. Why weren't even the drones pulled out? They had no answers for that.

Jennifer: The community should have been on lockdown, due to getting a phone call stating this person had a gun. Everybody, the whole community, should have been alerted.

Judy: There was no gun. The next day we went back over to the house. Well, I didn't, Jen did, because the police were there, and there was blood all over the sea cat.

Jennifer: One officer, I can't remember which one, came out with a silver bolt. 

He said, "This is what he hurt himself with." 

I looked at him like, "Hurt himself? What do you mean?" 

He said, "Well, he's got cuts there." 

I said, "If you're saying that he tried to commit... No. Don't even go there. Can't you tell that he threw things around and obviously hurt himself?" Somebody that tries to hurt themselves doesn't wrap themselves up, and on his phone we found pictures of him wrapped up.

Then they said, "He had his phone? Where's his phone? Can we have his phone?" It's like we were doing their job for them. Now they wanted the phone.

Judy: After they left, we went back over to the house and found his phone, his kettle, his candy, his cigarettes, his lighter, his chocolate, everything. He obviously bought an extra lighter, because when his brother found him, his brother found a trail where he had lit a fire. His brother even said, "Why didn't he stay there? If he had stayed there, we would eventually have seen the smoke, or somebody would have." But there are all those ifs.

Jennifer: When we went to the funeral home, I asked, "Was he stiff? Was he hard?" They said no. The funeral guy looked at me and said he wasn't stiff. He still had all his blood and everything in his organs. He wasn't stiff at all.

Judy: If they had looked for him, he would have been alive, but he probably would have lost some limbs, because he was really frostbitten. It was so cold that time. Around the time we had his services, even Jade Mackay went missing. That's another young fellow who is gone and left behind a child. Josh left behind six children, three girls and three boys. The oldest is Elizabeth, and she just graduated this year. Josh missed that. He'll miss all the rest of the kids' graduations. Being a grandpa.

Jennifer: Being a dad for them.

Judy: Watching them get married, walking his daughters down the aisle. None of those things. I'm raising two of the children he left behind, the two that were with him. The oldest was Elizabeth, like I said. The youngest was only nineteen days old, because he passed away January twenty-third, and she was born January fourth. He's got tons of pictures on his phone of his daughter, and we're thankful for that. They're just awesome pictures, because he was an awesome father. He loved every one of his children. He never had favourites. But if any of them got into trouble, it was, "Mom, they're not listening." He would call me, and I would have to deal with it. His children are taking it really hard, because they don't have their daddy. They don't have that. And I'll never have that again.

Jennifer: It makes me really sad when Father's Day comes up, especially at schools.

Judy: They make gifts for their uncles. Uncle Jeff will get a gift, Uncle Paul will get a gift, their grandma will get an extra gift. But my son wasn't a materialistic person. He kept everything. He was a hoarder like his mom, let's put it that way. He didn't have to receive expensive gifts. He went into the pawn shop one time and came home with gifts for me, a coffee cup that had "Grandma" on it. He said, "This is from Elizabeth," because she was the first granddaughter from his side. She wasn't around to do it for me, but he had to do it for me. There were other things with just "Grandma" on them. He would buy those things. They weren't expensive, but they were gifts from him, and they meant a lot to him, so they meant a lot to us.

Jennifer: And he loved candles. He loved Bath and Body Works. Surprisingly, I've never met another man that loved Bath and Body Works as much as my brother. Every time he came over, he smelled every single one of my candles.

Judy: And he loved fires.

Jennifer: Yes. I found in his phone that he said, "I don't know what it is about fires, but it seems to calm me down. It soothes my soul. There's just something about fires that calms me right down." And that night he was even having a fire.

Judy: One time when he was having a fire, Jen told him, "What are you doing? What are you throwing in there?"

Jennifer: I was in my house, and I could smell sage, like smudge. This was after he got back home. He was outside having a fire, and we were going to have fireworks. I was inside grabbing chips and pop for the kids, and I thought, "Man, somebody's visiting me." I could smell sage. I went outside and said, "Josh, you're never going to believe it. I smelled smudge, really strong, in the house, and I had the windows open." 

He said, "That's me. I threw a handful in. I was smudging the res."

Judy: He was a character. He always said he was populating the res. He only populated it because he left six behind, and those are going to add a whole bunch more to the res. But he was one funny fella, and he'd help anybody. She took him into town one time, and he saw some elderly people outside raking leaves, and he said, "Sister, stop."

Jennifer: I said, "Why? Do you know them?" 

He said, "I'm going to go rake those leaves for you." 

I said, "Josh, we're going shopping." 

He said, "It'll take me five minutes, just hold on, okay?" 

We were at the apartments downtown, and he went and raked up all those leaves for those old people. I have a picture of it. He just had a heart of gold. He would have given the shirt off his back to anybody.

Judy: His kids were his world. His brother and sister were his world, too. His parents, well, his father and I weren't together, but he'd say, "Okay, I'm going to Dad's house." He'd make jokes of it. "I like this. I get to eat here, Mom, and then I can go over there and eat." He was always up and down Uncle Road. Everybody knew it was Josh.

"Is there another story about Josh that's your favourite, that you want to share?"

Jennifer: There are so many of my brother. There's one that everybody loves on Facebook. I pulled up to his house one time, and I swear I had just seen him, and I couldn't find him. 

I'm parked there in my SUV, looking everywhere, "Josh! Josh!" I was parked by his garbage can, and all of a sudden he jumped out and scared me. I was like, "Whoa!" Then he's like, "Hello!" I couldn't stop laughing. I had somebody with me, and we were laughing, and the kids were laughing in the vehicle. Then I said, "Wait, can you do that again? I want to get it on video." So he did it again. The first time was just for fun, but the second time he did it on camera for me.

Judy: He'd do anything anybody asked him to do, crazy or not. That was just Josh. That was his character. That was him.

Jennifer: If you dared him to do anything, Josh was doing it.

Judy: You didn't have to ask him twice. He'd do it the first time, dare or not.

When he dropped something, if it was food, it was the five-second rule, and he'd pick it up and put it in his mouth. He didn't care. She made eggs Benedict one time, and he was over there eating. He goes, "Whose plate is this on the counter? Why would they leave this on the counter? Look at all of this."

Jennifer: Hollandaise sauce. He's sitting there scraping it, and I said, "That's not even yours."

Judy: I said, "Why would you do that?" 

He said, "That's okay, we're family. You can't leave this behind."

Jennifer: All this goodness, and he's scraping all the hollandaise sauce onto his plate. I'm like, "My gosh. There's more."

Judy: He loved his McDonald's burgers, but they had to have no onions. Growing up, we'd go to town, and I'd say, "Okay, what do you guys want?" 

"McDonald's." 

So we'd swing by McDonald's. The odd time I would forget the "no onions," so I'd scrape them off. Well, I forgot one onion once, and now he's gagging. 

"What are you getting, Mom? There's onions in it." 

I said, "No, my boy, there's no onions." There was an onion in there, and he found it.

We said, "How do you know?" Sure enough, the hair on his arms would stand up. He wasn't allergic. He just didn't like them.

Jennifer: He's like, "Do you want to see how bad I don't like onions?" He grabbed that onion and put it in his mouth, and all the hair on his arms stood up. He said, "You see how much I don't like onions?" 

I was like, "Okay."

Judy: So that's a tradition now. We'll go and get cheeseburgers, no onions.

Jennifer: Yeah, we'll burn it in the fire for him. Or make his favourite dish. He really loved mushroom caps, too. His egg sandwiches had to be very yolky so he could dip his bread in all the time.

Judy: He loved and idolized his grandparents. His uncle that passed on before him, he did everything with him. He used his phone number for his bank number. That's how he remembered his number. Just different things that he would do.

Jennifer: Throughout the family, I found that he did that a lot. He would go see all the aunties, the uncles, the cousins. He made his rounds all the time.

"What do you hope this project helps other people understand from sharing his story?"

Judy: I hope they can get comfort from our loss, as we can get comfort from theirs, if they'd like to share it, because we all eventually lose somebody. But to lose somebody this tragically, I don't wish this on anybody. As far as I'm concerned, I believe he'd still be alive today if that 911 call wasn't made. On top of it, they lied again and stated that he had the gun, because there were two calls. One was made that he was disturbing them and they were trying to sleep or something. I don't know the whole story. But the second one was that he's got a gun now and he's threatening us, and that's when the police came out.

Jennifer: A year later, somebody did tell me that she was at that house that night. She said, "Your brother didn't even come in the driveway like they said he did. He didn't do anything." She came forward a year later and said, "Your brother didn't have a gun. He didn't even come in the driveway." She said they were laughing at him and everything.

Judy: They said, "We'll get him to come faster. We'll say he's got a gun."

Jennifer: I asked if she had talked with the police, of course. But...

Judy: Now it's September 2026, and it's going to be four years. We still don't have justice.

Jennifer: Nobody's held accountable for his death. We just want accountability. We want somebody to be responsible for his death.

Judy: We need answers.

Jennifer: He needs justice.

Judy: It should never have happened this way. Jen said, "I could have coped, Mom, if it was a car accident." We never got to say goodbye. That's one of the hardest things, and it hurts me the most, because we didn't get to say goodbye. His brother said that when he found him, he wiped some snow off his forehead and kissed him and asked him why. And he laid beside him. But he never touched him. He said, "I wanted to grab and hold him, so I don't understand."

Jennifer: He said, "I don't understand why I couldn't get to the point of holding him." When he walked up to go find him, he saw him there laying between two logs. 

He was with somebody walking, and he said, "Jeff." 

And then he said, "No, I don't think that's him. Let's go this way." 

Then, "Jeff, it's right there." 

And he said, "I think that's him." 

He didn't want to believe it was actually his brother laying there, because it didn't look good, with the amount of blood, too. He went over there, and there was a little bit of snow on his face. He brushed the snow off, and he was just hollering, "Josh, why?" 

I asked him, "Were his eyes open?" 

He said, "I don't even know, because I didn't look in his eyes. There was something telling me, and I believe it was our brother, that wouldn't let me look in his face."

"Is there anything else you want to add, or any final thoughts?"

Jennifer: If there are people telling you not to talk about your loved ones, what helps me is talking about him. I love talking about him. He's got six babies that love hearing stories when they come to Auntie's house.

Judy: They love the stories just as much as you do. We love hearing stories, so we know they want to hear those stories as well.

Jennifer: I don't like being told, "You've got to let him rest." It really bothers me and hurts me, because it feels like I have to just put my brother in the past. I'm going to take him with me until I see him again. It gives me comfort to still make his favourite food, to do his birthday parties. I've done his birthday parties almost every year since he's been gone.

Judy: We celebrate one way or another. If not twice a year or whatever, he's celebrated all the time. Somebody phones us up and tells us, "We're making a fire for Josh," or they'll put on Facebook, "This is for you, Josh." We've seen different things in fires, images, and it's weird. You'll see those images and you could swear it was Josh sitting there.

Jennifer: He's come forward in a couple of the mediums already, too. Very strongly.

Judy: We just want people to know that they're not alone. It's sad that they're not alone, but there's somebody out there. I've always told my children growing up, if we're hurting, there's always somebody out there that's hurting worse than us. Like I said, it's going to be four years, and we don't have answers. There are people out there where it's eight years, seven years, ten years. There are women that are gone that are still gone, and they don't have answers. It's not fair. It's not right. Somebody has to be held accountable for their actions. For somebody to be missing, that means something happened. There's a reason they're missing. So why are they missing? There have to be answers out there, and we have to look for them. We can't stop, as family, as friends, as a mother, an uncle, aunt, dad, cousin. We're their voices now. We're going to be there for them. We're going to make it happen, or at least try. We'll go down fighting one way or another. There's going to be an answer. Our answers.