George William Giles, 47, vanished from Lake Simcoe after a boating emergency on the evening of November 5, 1989. He and a friend left Fox Island around 5:30 p.m. bound for Days Marina in Island Grove, but large waves swamped their boat. The two men abandoned the partially submerged vessel and attempted to swim back to Fox Island using gasoline cans for flotation. The friend made it back and called police from Giles’s cottage; Giles did not return.

A search by police and volunteers began that night and continued for days with no sign of Giles. The friend’s companion survived, and the boat was found nearly two weeks later, beached on a sandbar near Orillia on November 16. Giles was last seen wearing a black Yamaha jacket and is presumed drowned, but his body has never been recovered. The York Regional Police continue to list the case as an open investigation.

Did anyone on or around Fox Island that weekend notice anything unusual, or have information about the boat or its route that might help explain what happened?