— Jordan Wabasse —
The seventh feather
15-year-old Jordan Wabasse was the only one of the seven who did not attend DFC. Filled with dreams of becoming a professional hockey player that were too big for his home in Webequie, he enrolled in the Matawa Learning Centre in Thunder Bay (25-26). While he was a student there, he had to board with his distant cousin, Clifford Wabasse, and Clifford's wife Jessica, and take public transit to school.
Jordan was last seen on Monday, February 7, 2011, on a Thunder Bay Transit bus a block away from his boarding house. Clifford reported that he was missing to the Thunder Bay Police a day later, but the Thunder Bay Emergency Task Unit did not conduct its first search until three days later. No Amber Alert was issued; the police searched on foot, putting up posters of Jordan's face (32). Indigenous groups were integral to the search for Jordan, finding his baseball cap and running shoes in the snow (34, 37), but Jordan's body would not be found until early May in the thawing Kam river (42).
The Thunder Bay Police marked Jordan's death as "accidental" on his file, with the cause of death being "cold water drowning". There was no effort made to provide an explanation as to how Jordan went from being a block away from his boarding house, to drowned in the river several kilometers away (46-47).