On April 27, 1980, seven-year-old Leon John Kitchekesik disappeared from the shoreline of a family cabin on Gull Lake, Manitoba. He and his three-year-old sister had been walking along the ice-covered shore when the sister screamed; parents followed the child’s small footprints in the snow to a small hole in the ice. There were no footprints leading away from the hole. A land search was conducted and the prevailing belief was that Leon drowned, but no body was recovered.

Leon was described as 50 inches tall and 79 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes, and was wearing blue denim pants the day he vanished. His family, members of the Tataskweyak Cree Nation, erected a large memorial cross on an island in the Nelson River where they last saw him; years later Manitoba Hydro removed the cross, which the family said felt like another loss.

How many people remember that area of Gull Lake in 1980 or have information about Leon’s disappearance?