A year after her 81-year-old father's disappearance, daughter wants changes to help find vulnerable seniors

One year after her 81-year-old father went missing, Britt Moberg is fighting keeping his memory alive — and to see changes that she hopes will spare other families from the pain hers has experienced.

Earl Moberg was last seen on Dec. 12, 2023, after leaving his home in Winnipeg's River East area.

"I don't want this to happen to anyone else," his daughter said during a Thursday interview from Victoria, where she lives.

When Earl went missing, she flew from British Columbia and joined a search by the Bear Clan citizen patrol group. She continued the search on her own, walking along the Assiniboine River and hacking through brush-covered fields. 

She now believes her father is dead.

"It's devastating to think that while walking by the river, my dad's remains were potentially feet away from me, under the ice or brush," Moberg said. "We're talking about someone who was incredibly vulnerable and could only last a few days." 

Earl worked as a teacher, first in Winnipeg but more in northern Manitoba First Nations communities, said Moberg. She remembers how he would call her every Sunday when she moved to Victoria. When dementia started to take hold of her father, she called him. 

"He always had time to talk, as long as I wanted. He was always there for me,"  she said.

Watching her father's decline from dementia was painful.

She realized something wasn't right they went on a trip to visit relatives in Sweden in 2019. He would misplace his passport and forget details, she said.

Her father was always an active person and would take walks every day, but as his dementia progressed, he would get lost, said Moberg. Neighbours and family members who would find him and take him home. 

He had been connected with geriatric health services since 2019, but still lived at home, with virtually no home care support, said Moberg.

Her mother got him a tracker to help find him if he got lost, but he wasn't wearing it the day he went missing.

New systems needed

Moberg has been pushing to see silver alerts — issued by police when a vulnerable adult is reported missing — broadcast to cellphones the way amber alerts for missing children are.

Pushing those alerts could save lives, she said. 

On the night her dad went missing, Moberg's family struggled to get word out, despite a silver alert being issued.

"The present system we have doesn't reach enough people to help people get found," said Moberg. 

She has submitted a petition to the federal government to develop a national silver alert system for phones. The petition, sponsored by Winnipeg Conservative member of Parliament Raquel Dancho, has more than 2,000 signatures.

Moberg also met with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority to discuss her father's case as the health authority finalized a critical incident investigation.

She said she's been told a critical incident report has been completed, but a summary of its findings and recommendations has not yet been made public.

She'd like to see better support from the health authority to help families create safety plans for people with dementia, and also hopes there will be a provincial review of the search for her father. 

The CEO of a seniors' advocacy group said families and community members often shoulder the burden of finding vulnerable seniors when they wander away or get lost.

If a missing senior with cognitive issues isn't found within 12 hours, there's a 50 per cent chance they will end up in hospital with injuries or found dead, said CanAge CEO Laura Tamblyn Watts.

"Why is it that our home care, our health-care systems and our social care systems are so underfunded that we have people wandering away … ending up either in hospital or dead because we don't have appropriate responses?" she said.

Silver alert systems and other responses for missing seniors vary between provinces, she said.

Community groups have popped up to help get word out when a senior goes missing, but "it's not the job of everyday citizens to put together warnings or retrieval processes," said Tamblyn Watts.

"It's really the job of the government to take this seriously."

'Expand the tool box'

In Manitoba, the provincial Missing Persons Act was amended in 2017 to include silver alerts and allow police to release information when a vulnerable adult goes missing. 

But unlike amber alerts, they aren't broadcast to phones, because such emergency broadcasts fall under federal jurisdiction.

MLA Lisa Naylor, who is Manitoba's minister responsible for the Emergency Management Organization, says the province supports phone notifications for silver alerts.

"It's important to expand the tool box," said Naylor, adding her heart goes out to Moberg's family on a difficult anniversary.

The province has made recommendations at the federal level to consider adding silver alerts to the National Public Alerting System, Naylor said.

On Thursday, Winnipeg police reissued the silver alert for Earl Moberg. They continue to ask anyone with information to contact the missing persons unit at 204-986-6250.