Julie Diane Fortier

On a crisp Friday morning in northern Ontario, 18-year-old Julie Diane Fortier left her family home on Lake Street in the small community of Elk Lake for what should have been a normal school day. Carrying an armload of books, the high school student boarded the bus that would take her to one of the secondary schools in the nearby town of New Liskeard. It was September 19, 1980, and it was the last time her family would ever see her.

Julie never arrived at her school that day. Instead of getting off at her usual stop, she was last seen exiting the bus in downtown New Liskeard, in an area known locally as the "bank corner." From that moment, she vanished, leaving her family and the close-knit community in a state of desperate uncertainty. The initial search by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) yielded no trace of the young woman, and the days turned into weeks, then months, with no answers. The mystery of what happened to Julie Fortier would haunt the region for years to come.

The first break in the case, a grim and partial discovery, came five years later. On September 19, 1985, the fifth anniversary of her disappearance, some of Julie's personal belongings were found near the town of Haileybury. The items included her schoolbooks, running shoes, a school jacket, and her ID card, confirming the fears that she had met with foul play. The discovery renewed the investigation, but Julie’s whereabouts remained unknown. The community was left to wonder and wait, living with the disquieting knowledge that a young woman had been taken from them, her fate still a secret held by the vast landscape of the north.

The agonizing wait for a final answer lasted nearly a decade. In May 1990, human remains were discovered in a wooded area near a dump outside of Haileybury. Dental records soon confirmed the skeletal remains were those of Julie Diane Fortier. Her death was officially ruled a homicide, transforming a long-standing missing person case into an active murder investigation. The location where she was found, not far from where her belongings had been discarded, suggested that her killer had knowledge of the local area.

Over the years, the OPP has continued to investigate Julie’s murder. In the early 1990s, investigators identified a person of interest, a man named Daniel Wood, who was suspected in other crimes against young women in central Ontario. Despite being a focus of the investigation, Wood was never charged in connection with Julie's death and has maintained his innocence in other criminal matters. No other arrests have ever been made, and the case has grown cold, though it has never been closed.

Decades have passed since Julie Fortier’s life was cut short, but the search for justice continues. The Government of the Province of Ontario is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for her murder. As of September 2018, her case remains an unsolved crime, a painful chapter in the history of the Temiskaming District. The Ontario Provincial Police urges anyone with information, no matter how insignificant it may seem, to come forward.