‘None of this makes sense:’ Family of missing St. Boniface teacher clings to hope

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/12/2016 (2946 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There is more than one mystery connected to the disappearance of St. Boniface teacher Kevin Dilk late last month.

One is obvious.

Why is the respected and much liked 50-year-old gone?

And where did he go?

The other one that some people are asking – why haven’t his wife and two young adult children spoken out publicly or been seen to join the search for him? – really shouldn’t be that much of a mystery.

Given what they’re going through.

In their public absence, the voice of the family, in a limited way, has been his niece, Ginger, the creator of an open Facebook page called Finding Kevin Dilk. But now Ginger’s mother, Heather – who was initially too distressed to speak with the media about her missing older brother — has joined her daughter.

Over the phone Friday, I began by asking Heather for an update.

“Unfortunately we don’t have a lot of information to share at the moment,” she said.

But over the next nearly 40 minutes, Heather would have a lot to share, including the last family gathering less than a week before her brother left his home early on the morning of Nov. 23. And more to say, not about how the family is coping, but how her brother’s disappearance made her reflect about how badly she felt for the still-missing Thelma Krull’s family more than a year ago when the then 57-year-old went for a summer Saturday morning walk, and never returned.

But, again to begin with, I was asking her what she knew about her brother’s case.

“I know,” Heather said, “that the police are currently looking at any video footage that businesses have offered to have them viewed. I think there have been some businesses along Marion, and some other people who have offered up video in the surrounding area of his house. I think that’s the priority right now with the police. To see if they could determine once he left his home what direction he headed. Because as far as we know, as a family, right now there are no leads.”

At least none the police have shared with the family, so far.

I suggested there seems to be some confusion about how and when her brother left home that Wednesday work day.

“I think we’re all just as confused,” Heather said.

Since his disappearance Heather said she has only spoken to Kevin’s wife Sylvie on the phone. Apparently Sylvie left work as usual some time around 5 a.m.

“And Kevin was still at home, in his office at home, in his pyjamas.”

That was the last time Sylvie saw him.

“She assumed he got up and left for work that day, as well.”

But, at this point at least, all the family knows is he left sometime between the time his wife left and when his 20-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter got up around 8:30 a.m. and their dad wasn’t there.

And, of course, they also know he didn’t show up at work at College Beliveau.

Report cards and parent teacher meetings were scheduled for the next day, from what Heather learned, so it wouldn’t have been unusual for Kevin to stay late at school the night before. She doesn’t know exactly what happened at his home that evening when he didn’t return, but suggested the family probably thought he was still at work. Heather said she didn’t get into that kind of detail when she spoke with Sylvie.

“I just know that on Thursday morning, when Sylvie realized that he hadn’t been home, they realized they needed to contact the police.”

Police issued a missing person new release the same Nov. 24 day.

Heather recalled the first time she learned her brother had disappeared.

“I dropped to the floor. No, this can’t be happening to us.”

She recalled the last time she saw Kevin.

“It was the Friday before he went missing,” she said. “We had a family get together at his house.”

Actually, it was his son Charlie’s 20th birthday party. The whole family was there, 13 in all, including Kevin’s and Heather’s younger sister, Michelle, their father Lloyd Dilk and their mother, Angela Wright, who are always there even though they’re divorced and remarried.

I gathered that the family is close.

“We’re incredibly close,” Heather said.

I made another assumption about the family, but this one was wrong.

When I called Kevin’s home Friday in hopes of someone answering, the recorded greeting was a man’s voice I took to be Kevin’s speaking French. And only French.

I asked Heather if the family has Franco Manitoban roots. No, she said. It’s just that Kevin was a French teacher.

“His life is the Franco Manitoban community . . . That’s his family.”

That sounded like strange way to phrase it, especially given the circumstances., but I knew what she was trying to say.

But what of his actual family, specifically his wife and kids, how are they doing, which is what I wanted to ask them when I called.

“They’re struggling. I know there are a lot of raw emotions, you know, when we start talking about Kevin, that surface. And we’re all just there to support each other.”

There have been many tears, Heather said, from everyone in Kevin’s family.

“None of this makes sense,” she said.

I wondered, if in retrospect, they noticed anything different about Kevin at that party just six days before he disappeared.

“We didn’t see any change in him at all Friday,” Heather responded. “Just his regular, you know, sociable brother, uncle, son, husband, father, that he always is. There was nothing different about him,” she said. “And trust me my family has talked about this a lot. Did anybody see or notice anything different. No.”

So, they live, and weep, and hug and reach out to each other with all they still have left.

Hope.

And people they’re so grateful for helping with them with that. The Manitoba Teachers Society has extended an offer of help and Heather and her sister have been working on a poster blitz Sunday that would extend beyond St. Boniface and St. Vital to other parts of the city. You can look for more about that on the Finding Kevin Dilk facebook page.

“We’re all extremely hopeful,” Heather said, “that because we haven’t found a body anywhere that we’re still searching for a person.”

Which brought me to the obvious missing question and this missing man.

What was he like?

“He was a rock,” Heather said. “He was always there for everyone.”

And now, ironically, the man who was always there, can’t be found.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca