In the summer of 2007, Gary and Ann Bason were living through a loss few parents could imagine. Their eldest son, 28-year-old Master Corporal Colin Bason, a reservist with the Royal Westminster Regiment, was serving in Afghanistan when he and five other Canadian soldiers were killed on July 4 after their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb. Colin left behind his wife and their infant daughter. Only weeks later, before the Bason family had even begun to comprehend the enormity of that loss, their younger son would disappear.
Beric Bradley Bason was 26 years old and lived in Abbotsford, British Columbia. He worked as a welder and was described by the RCMP as being 5 feet 11 inches tall and approximately 150 pounds, with short brown hair and green eyes. According to Canada’s official missing-person database, Beric has been missing since July 22, 2007, and the reason for his disappearance remains unknown.
Not long after Colin’s funeral, Beric went with his close friend Justin Henderson on a fishing holiday at Loon Lake Resort near Clinton in British Columbia’s Interior. The trip had apparently been planned before Colin was killed, and Beric decided to go despite the extraordinary circumstances his family was facing. Contemporary reporting described the resort as a remote collection of cabins, campsites and RV spaces beside the long, narrow lake, reached after hours of driving from Abbotsford.
Justin would later provide an intimate account of what happened during the trip. Beric was grieving his brother far more deeply than might have been apparent to others. During their stay at Loon Lake, his emotions overwhelmed him. He cried over Colin’s death and became increasingly distraught. On what would become Beric’s final night at the resort, he was reportedly wearing one of his brother’s shirts. Justin later recalled seeing a side of his friend that scared him. Not because Beric threatened him, but because his grief and intoxication had left him extremely agitated and emotional.
Alcohol had also become a significant factor that evening. The RCMP’s initial appeal described Beric as very intoxicated when he disappeared. At some point during the early hours of July 22, Beric left the cabin, also leaving his belongings behind, which included his cellphone. The initial reporting also indicated that his wallet was left at the resort, although his father later said Beric had approximately $500 cash with him.
Justin had temporarily left Beric alone in the cabin, hoping his friend might settle down. When he returned approximately an hour later, the door was open and the lights were still on. Beric’s belongings were there, however Beric was not.
The RCMP established that Beric was last seen at approximately 1:30am on Sunday, July 22, 2007, walking away from Loon Lake Resort in the direction of the highway. He was wearing jeans, white running shoes and a jacket that might have been blue. He had no known friends or aquaintances in the area. The official Canada’s Missing database continues to identify Loon Lake Resort as his last known location.
There was at least one possible sighting after Beric left the resort. The initial RCMP appeal referred to a possible sighting later on Sunday, raising hope that he had made it out of the immediate resort area. Investigators subsequently followed up on possible sightings, but none could be confirmed. This distinction is important. If the later sighting had been verified, investigators would have known Beric survived the night and had travelled some distance from the cabin. Without confirmation, however, his trail effectively ends near Loon Lake.
A large-scale search began almost immediately. Search and Rescue personnel, RCMP officers, police dogs and a helicopter searched the area surrounding the resort. As the operation expanded, searchers moved into the valley north of the lake using ATVs and worked their way through the rugged mountainsides. Police and Search and Rescue personnel also took boats onto Loon Lake, examining the shoreline, shallow water and the southern side of the lake, where some areas were accessible only by boat. By July 25, the operation had grown to include two police helicopters, a police boat, police ATVs and approximately 30 Search and Rescue personnel from Logan Lake, Kamloops, Barriere and 100 Mile House, along with local support services. Despite that extensive effort, searchers found nothing establishing that Beric had entered or remained in any of the areas they searched.
One obvious possibility was the lake itself.
Loon Lake presented investigators with a particularly difficult problem. The RCMP explained during the original search that a police dive team had not been brought in because investigators couldn’t identify a specific underwater area to target. The lake was described as extremely deep with relatively few shallow areas suitable for searching. Without evidence showing where Beric might have entered the water, conducting a comprehensive underwater search would have been extraordinarily difficult.
On July 25, three days after Beric disappeared, the organized search was suspended. Police stressed that this did not mean the investigation had ended. Searchers had exhausted the areas they could reasonably examine based upon the information available at the time, but investigators continued pursuing leads. RCMP also remained open to the possibility that Beric had obtained a ride and left the Loon Lake area altogether.
That possibility became especially important because Beric had cash.
If someone driving through the area encountered a young man walking toward the highway and offered him a ride, Beric could have travelled far beyond the original search zone very quickly. The driver might not even have realized that the passenger would soon become the subject of a major missing-person investigation.
For Gary Bason, that possibility provided both hope and another terrible uncertainty.
Less than a month after Beric disappeared, Gary publicly appealed directly to anyone who might have picked up his son. He didn’t necessarily expect that person to know what ultimately happened to Beric. He simply wanted to know where they had dropped him off. If someone had driven Beric away from Loon Lake, that information could completely change the geographical focus of the investigation.
Gary also refused to leave the searching entirely to police.
He repeatedly returned to the Clinton area and searched with his two dogs. Local residents and Beric’s friend helped. By August, extensive searches had covered hundreds of miles of bush, police had conducted door-to-door inquiries, and a police helicopter had again searched from the air. Nothing revealed where Beric had gone.
As the months passed, Gary’s search became intensely personal. Later reporting described him crawling beneath fallen trees, pushing through brambles, searching steep terrain and returning again and again to the wilderness around Loon Lake. Justin remained close to the family as well. He was more than Beric’s friend; he was the last person known to have shared those final hours with him and therefore one of the few people who could help Gary and Ann understand what their son had been experiencing before he disappeared.
Beric’s grief inevitably became part of the discussion surrounding his disappearance. He had just lost his brother violently and unexpectedly. Justin’s account makes clear that Beric was emotionally overwhelmed that night. But there is an important difference between recognizing those circumstances and concluding that Beric deliberately harmed himself.
There is no publicly established evidence that Beric died by suicide, and the RCMP’s official case page does not offer such an explanation. It simply states that the reason for his disappearance is unknown.
An accidental death remains another possibility. Beric was heavily intoxicated, it was the middle of the night, and the surrounding terrain was rugged. Someone in those circumstances could become disoriented, suffer an injury, succumb to exposure or enter the lake accidentally. The failure to locate him during the searches doesn’t eliminate those possibilities, particularly in difficult wilderness terrain.
The lake itself remains equally difficult to dismiss. The fact that investigators couldn’t narrow down an underwater search area meant that a complete search of Loon Lake wasn’t practical during the original operation. But again, there is no publicly available evidence establishing that Beric entered the water.
Then there is also the highway.
Beric was last seen walking in its direction, and investigators explicitly considered the possibility that someone picked him up. If that happened, the entire original search area could be irrelevant to whatever happened next. Beric could have been dropped in another community, at another highway junction, or many kilometres from Loon Lake.
There is also no publicly established evidence that Beric was the victim of foul play. His disappearance has naturally generated questions over the years, but suspicion cannot substitute for evidence. Nothing currently released by the RCMP identifies a suspect or indicates that another person has been determined responsible for his disappearance.
The cruelest part of the story may be what it did to the Bason family. In a matter of weeks, Gary and Ann went from having two adult sons to burying one and searching for the other. Colin’s fate was devastating but known. Beric’s was something entirely different. There was no funeral, no grave and no definitive answer about whether he was alive or dead.
Years later, that distinction remained. When Ann participated in events commemorating Canadian service members and the sacrifice made by her eldest son, news coverage still described Beric as missing from the fishing trip that followed Colin’s death.
Nearly nineteen years have now passed.
The RCMP’s official Canada’s Missing database still carries Beric Bradley Bason as a missing person. As of August 2026, he has not been located, and his disappearance remains unexplained. His case is held by Clinton RCMP under reference number 2007-564.
Somewhere in the events surrounding the early morning of July 22, 2007, there is an answer. Perhaps Beric wandered into terrain searchers couldn’t reach. Perhaps he entered Loon Lake. Perhaps the unconfirmed sighting really was him. Perhaps a stranger gave him a ride and never realized the importance of that brief encounter.
Or perhaps something happened that investigators and his family have never even considered.
What is certain is painfully limited.
Beric Bradley Bason went to Loon Lake with a friend shortly after burying his brother. He was grieving, he had been drinking heavily, and sometime during the night he walked away. By approximately 1:30 that morning, he was seen heading away from the resort toward the highway.
Then he disappeared.
Despite helicopters in the sky, boats on the lake, searchers in the mountains and a father who repeatedly returned to crawl through the wilderness looking for his son, not one confirmed trace of Beric has brought his family the answer they have waited almost nineteen years to receive.
If you have information on Beric’s case, please contact any of the following:
Clinton RCMP: 250-459-2221
Reference Case#: 2007-564
Canada’s Missing Case reference: 2014004976
Crime Stoppers: 1-800-222-TIPS(8477)
Online at: https://www.canadiancrimestoppers.org/submit-a-tip/submit-a-tip
Crime Stoppers provides anonymous tipping
Send email to the National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains at: canadasmissing-disparuscanada@rcmp-grc.gc.ca
Sources: Canada’s Missing, Porchlight Canada, Global News, Kamloops This Week, CanadianObits
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