Lance Briere’s mother waits for news of son who ‘gave me purpose’

“How the hell could my son just vanish? And the Ski-doo just gone.”

For Elaine Briere, living 2,000 km away in Edmonton, the disappearance of Lance Briere from Inuvik early last month has been an endless nightmare.

Lance, who is 32, was last seen in the NWT town’s liquor store on February 8. Elaine says she reported him missing from her Edmonton home on February 17 after failing to hear from him.

“Somebody in Inuvik knows something,” Elaine said. “I want to find my son. I want to bring him home with me, just keep him safe.”

Earlier this month, RCMP published images of a snowmobile similar to one thought to have been in Lance’s possession prior to his disappearance.

Elaine said Lance had been working as a cook at the Gwich’in Wellness Camp 16 km outside Inuvik, which is accessible by snowmobile in winter.

According to Elaine, Lance had no cellphone of his own at the time he went missing. He had been borrowing his Inuvik-based father’s phone, she said. Elaine said RCMP discovered Lance remains logged in to his Facebook account on that phone and police are now tracking that account and his bank account in the hope of seeing some activity. So far, there has been none.

The wellness camp job was the latest in a series of cooking roles Lance had taken, Elaine said, adding her son always had a soft spot for food.

“If he wanted to make a supper for us, he would just go into the kitchen and grab whatever. And it was just like… it was like magic,” she said.

“He’s the one that gave me purpose. He gave me a reason. He provided many better days.”

The search efforts

S/Sgt Jesse Aubin of Inuvik RCMP said no evidence linked to foul play has so far been discovered during efforts to find Lance.

Police in the territory say they work with local groups to carry out searches in these circumstances because individual organizations have so few resources on their own.

RCMP and the Inuvik Fire Department collaborated on an initial February 19 search when Lance was reported missing.

At that point, his last known location was the wellness camp. Brian Larman, the Town of Inuvik’s director of protective services and fire chief, said four people in two vehicles headed to the camp while examining all the connected trails for signs of him.

Searchers spent time “observing every visible snow machine track off the road itself to determine entry and exit points from the ice road proper to determine if there were any tracks that ended unexpectedly,” Larman wrote in an email this week. “We did not observe any.”

Footage from cameras at the town’s boat launch has also been scrutinized, Larman said, and alternative routes between the town and wellness camp have been inspected. Private camps along the way were also checked out, he wrote, without any new information coming to light.

At that point, Larman wrote, RCMP informed searchers that a sighting of Lance at the liquor store on February 8 had been confirmed. That changed the search parameters, he said. 

“Following consultation with the RCMP, we felt that additional searches within the original search area would not be prudent,” Larman wrote.

“This decision did not discontinue the overall search and missing person initiative of the RCMP … the Protective Services Department is willing and capable of providing renewed assistance as requested by the RCMP, should new and actionable information be obtained.”

He added that protective services staff have searched for Lance’s snowmobile during their regular patrols without success.

There don’t appear to have been any formal ground searches for Lance since February 21.

The Canadian Civil Air Search and Rescue Association flew a spotter plane over areas of the Mackenzie Delta on March 8, according to correspondence from NWT Premier RJ Simpson’s office seen by Cabin Radio, and again on the weekend of March 15-16.

Missing persons regulations being drafted

Elaine said police initially phoned her several times daily with updates. She has since asked them to call “just once a day because it’s really exhausting.”

She said RCMP have told her “there’s still people actively searching,” and that members of the military in Inuvik for a recent training exercise “were also looking.”

Waiting for news, she described feeling as though she has “zero support” to deal with the mental and emotional burden of her son being missing.

While police say they haven’t encountered any legislative barriers yet in the search for Lance, the NWT government is still in the process of implementing a Missing Persons Act that has been years in the making.

That legislation became a focal point in the months after the disappearance of Frank Gruben, who went missing from Fort Smith in May 2023 and who has still to be found.

Elaine said it’s “frustrating and heartbreaking” that legislation designed to help searches like these is not yet making a difference. While the bill passed last year, regulations are still being put in place.

“Do they only start pushing the paperwork when someone mentions it again?” She said. “Or is it just all sitting under a pile of other stuff?”

Earlier this month, a spokesperson for the NWT’s Department of Justice said staff were “still in the process of drafting regulations required to bring the Missing Persons Act into force.” 

“Once finalized, these will be posted for public comment for a 30-day period,” the department stated, adding that the comment period is expected to begin in May.

“Once that 30-day period has concluded and any relevant feedback has been incorporated, the regulations will be finalized and the act can be brought into force.”

From Elaine’s perspective, there hasn’t been enough communication about Lance. She wonders why nobody nearer to Inuvik reported him missing earlier, and why more is not being said about his disappearance.

She said she is “disappointed” the Gwich’in Tribal Council, which police said owned the snowmobile, did not – in her view – take swift action to report either Lance or the snowmobile missing.

“I’m so angry, you know?” Elaine said. (The tribal council did not respond to requests for comment. RCMP said the GTC had been “extremely cooperative.”)

“Always, always communicate,” Elaine said she taught her children as they grew up.

“Ask questions if you don’t understand. You know, if someone needs clarification, use the right words to clarify … the message you’re trying to get across.

“I’m seeing so much lack of communication. So much. It’s just a lack of people working together.”

Editor’s note: The author, a freelance journalist in Inuvik, is also a volunteer with the Canadian Civil Air Search and Rescue Association.