Three-year-old Dylan Ehler had been missing for almost a year when a small group gathered on the bank of the Salmon River near downtown Truro, Nova Scotia, to continue the search for him.
It was a bright, crisp, Saturday morning in mid-April 2021. Almost every Saturday since Dylan’s disappearance, his parents, Jason Ehler and Ashley Brown, had organized diminishing groups of volunteers. The meeting point was the Tim Hortons Soccer Pitch next to the river. Many presumed Dylan had fallen into Lepper Brook and then was carried into the faster moving river, which flows into Cobequid Bay and eventually the Bay of Fundy.
A small group of people — some wearing thick plaid quilted jackets to guard against the spring chill, several holding oversize cups of Tim Hortons coffee — stood around watching Jason try to get a drone off the ground. It was donated by Wings of Mercy, an organization that provides support to the families of missing people. The drone has the capacity to take pictures and video — for example, a missing child’s jacket tangled in thick brush. Jason sent the vast landscape scenes he captured back to Wings of Mercy for analysis.
As Ashley approached, a woman who looked to be in her 40s and wearing a neon construction vest, made a beeline for her. “I think someone took your kid,” she stage-whispered in Ashley’s direction. “Look for any pedophiles in the family and never turn your back on them.” Ashley received the suggestion politely, and then excused herself to join the rest of the group.
Other than Ashley’s dad, Norman Brown, who headed off to explore the river’s banks, no one appeared to be doing much searching. Turning a full circle, the location was a panoply of open fields, dry brush and that moderately moving river. It felt impossible to know where to start, other than somewhere near the water.
These sparsely attended Saturday searches underscore the maddening futility of the months — and now years — spent searching for Dylan that have so far yielded zero clues and no real developments. When asked on that April morning almost three years ago what they would do with unlimited resources, Jason said he would get a boat with side sonar, bring in cadaver dogs, and hire private search and rescue teams. Jason and Ashley, both in their 30s, briefly engaged a private investigator but soon ran out of cash.
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