Alberta man loses daughter’s ashes amid bed bug confusion

'When I heard that they had thrown away my daughter, it honestly felt like we had lost her all over again,' said Mistaken Chief, whose daughter's remains were in an urn necklace.

What was supposed to be a visit of healing and treatment for a back injury turned into a horrifying ordeal for the Mistaken Chief family.

Allen Mistaken Chief came to Lethbridge to alleviate his back pain and the family was staying at a hotel.

“I couldn’t do much,” he said, wincing as he shifted in his chair. “The most I could do was shuffle to the hot tub to help with my back. While I was in there, to be able to move again, my wife and son would go swimming.

“When they’d finish up, my wife and son would shower off the chlorine. She did notice those bites, and I kind of started putting two and two together,” Mistaken Chief said. “I went to go and check his bed and I lifted the left side of the bed. I noticed at the corner of the headboard, on the sheet, there was a large bed bug.”

He said the bugs were promptly caught and put into plastic cups and brought to the front desk. Mistaken Chief said the staff seemed “standoffish and passive,” but that the hotel then enacted its bed bug policy.

After bagging up their belongings for safekeeping as the hotel dealt with the pests, the Mistaken Chiefs went to leave, but they wanted some of their clothes because it was -14, Mistaken Chief said.

“When I had asked the lobby staff for at least a jacket, they gave me an answer that kind of set me off guard. It was that they were unauthorized to say anything about our luggage.”

He said the family found out the bags and luggage they had brought up to the front to be kept safe had actually been brought back into their room to be treated with heaters, without their knowledge.