Sask. mom pleads for public's help after 7-year-old daughter taken to unknown location by anti-vaccine dad
CBC
A Regina mother says her ex-husband took her daughter to an undisclosed location two months ago because he doesn't want the girl to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Mariecar Jackson is pleading for the public's help in locating the seven-year-old, who she last saw in mid-November. She said she fears for her daughter's mental health and her physical safety.
"She's only seven. She needs to be home. I just want her home," Mariecar said.
Mariecar said her marriage to her ex-husband, Michael Jackson, ended several years ago. Their daughter attended Grade 2 in Regina and lived most of the time with Mariecar, who worked as an educational assistant. The girl also spent time with Michael at his home in Carievale, Sask., a village 300 kilometres to the southeast.
Mariecar wanted to get her daughter vaccinated against COVID-19. The father did not. After disappearing, he went on an online talk show from an undisclosed location to air his views.
The girl was due back in Regina after a visit with her father in mid-November, but was not returned. Mariecar spoke to her daughter by phone on Nov. 21. That was their last contact, Mariecar said.
There was one unconfirmed sighting at a rural gas station in early December, but no one has seen the pair since, Mariecar said.
"We don't believe they are in the community any more. She could be out of province," said Jill Drennan, Mariecar's lawyer and director of Regina's rural legal aid office.
"We simply don't know where she is. We are asking the public for help."
Saskatchewan judges have issued two court orders demanding the girl be returned to her mother immediately.
"We've never seen anything quite like this," she said.
Police went to Michael's Carievale home to enforce the order, but no one was there, Drennan said Tuesday.
Saskatchewan RCMP were not available for comment. Regina police said the court orders on their own do not "provide the verification we would need" to merit an investigation by their department.
The father did appear last week via video from an undisclosed location on the web-based talk show Live with Laura Lynn. The host repeatedly expressed support for the father's actions. They exchanged unsubstantiated and disproven stories about COVID-19 vaccines for nearly 45 minutes. Michael said he "had to protect" the girl from the vaccine.
A small town northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., has become the unlikely home for hundreds of foreign workers, but many may have to leave the community they've embraced after the end of a federal program put in place to fill gaps in Canada's labour market.
There's mixed reaction in Waterloo to an injuction allowing police to detain, arrest and charge anyone who is participating in unsanctioned street parties in that city this weekend.
Diabetes Canada is excited about Prince Edward Island's new pharmacare deal with the federal government, but hopes the province will reevaluate copays on diabetes supplies, says a senior manager with the organization.
After 26 years of accommodating guests from across the world, Faith Embleton says she and her husband Ken are ready to sell their bed and breakfast.
A group of big-name companies including Google, Meta and Dow have signed a pledge to support tripling the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a signal of the technology's growing resurgence in popularity.
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
City staff would like Londoners to take a good look around their home and ask themselves a direct and possibly difficult question: Could everyone in your family survive at home, without leaving and with no other help, for a full 72 hours?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will officially become Canada's next prime minister within a few hours, taking the reins as the country barrels toward a general election and continues to fend off verbal and economic attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Recent cyberattacks in Newfoundland and Labrador should have been a wake up call for the federal government about the reality of an increasingly hostile world, says one cybersecurity expert.
A recent CBC News analysis found that Nova Scotia is rapidly losing some of its most affordable apartments, but housing experts say there are ways to prevent that.
Premier Susan Holt is defending her decision to not use electricity exports to Maine as leverage against U.S. tariffs, arguing the move might cause long-term pain for New Brunswickers.
Montreal's St. Patrick's Day parade first started on Saint-Paul Street in 1824, and a couple centuries later, this annual tradition is still going strong.
A congregation in Carman, Man., is coming to grips with the loss of their Anglican Lutheran church, a fixture in the community that was ravaged by a fire on Thursday.