In the fall of 1964, 16-year-old Eunice Esther Bird disappeared from Prince Rupert, British Columbia. More than sixty years later, the details surrounding her disappearance remain frustratingly sparse. There has been no confirmed sighting, no known explanation for what happened to her and no resolution for the family members who spent decades searching for answers.
Eunice was Indigenous, with black hair and brown eyes. Official records list her year of birth as 1948, although her younger sister, Wendy Redknap, later recalled that Eunice had been born in 1947. She was known by several surnames over the years, including Dick, Reece and Quaw, but to the people who loved her, she was also known by the affectionate nickname “Snooksie.”
Today, Canada’s Missing records September 1, 1964, as Eunice’s date of disappearance. The official account is startlingly brief: sometime during the fall of 1964, Eunice was last seen getting into a yellow sports car in Prince Rupert. She was never seen or heard from again.
Behind those few sentences, however, is a much larger story – one preserved in part by Eunice’s younger sister Wendy, who spoke about her during the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in 2018.
Wendy was only eight years old when her older sister disappeared, but she carried one particular memory of Eunice with her for the rest of her life. At the time, the family was staying at Cassiar Cannery, near Prince Rupert. One night, Wendy woke and saw Eunice talking with their grandmother. Eunice wanted her final paycheque from the cannery. Their grandmother told her to retrieve her train case, where the cheque was apparently being kept. Eunice got the cheque, and eventually Wendy went back to sleep.
It would become Wendy’s final personal memory of her sister.
As the years passed, Wendy tried to piece together what may have happened after that night. She spoke with people who had known Eunice and attempted to reconstruct her sister’s movements from memories that were already decades old. Those recollections did not always line up perfectly, but they provided clues that the official missing-person entry alone does not reveal.
Eunice had reportedly been at a birthday party around the time she vanished. People who knew her remembered her being near the highway, apparently hitchhiking. One story that emerged was that Eunice may have been trying to travel to Quesnel, where she intended to visit a boyfriend.
But there was a problem that remained unresolved even decades later.
No one seemed to know the boyfriend’s name.
Wendy and another sister, Crystal Bird, continued trying to determine who he was. A woman associated with the birthday gathering reportedly remembered that Eunice intended to hitchhike to Quesnel to see him, but she could not identify him either. For Eunice’s family, discovering the identity of that young man became one more unanswered question in a case already filled with them.
It is also unclear how the reported trip to Quesnel fits with the official account of Eunice entering a yellow sports car in Prince Rupert. Publicly available information does not identify the person driving that vehicle. There is no publicly released licence plate, make or model beyond its description as a yellow sports car, and there is no established public evidence connecting its driver to the unidentified boyfriend in Quesnel.
The two pieces of information could be connected, but there simply isn’t enough evidence available publicly to say that they are.
When Eunice failed to return, her family reportedly sought help from police. According to Wendy’s testimony before the National Inquiry, her parents contacted the RCMP but were essentially told there was little that could be done because Eunice was 16 and was probably a runaway.
Wendy’s recollection of what her parents were told meant that one of the most important opportunities to determine what happened to Eunice may have been lost almost immediately. Instead of the kind of urgent missing-child investigation that would be expected today, her family was left with very few answers and began searching for Eunice themselves.
Her parents never simply forgot about their daughter.
Eunice’s father was a commercial fisherman and journeyman carpenter, and his work sometimes brought him to Vancouver for union meetings. While he was there, Wendy remembered him walking around the city looking for Eunice.
Later, after he learned to drive, Eunice’s parents travelled through different parts of British Columbia searching for her. They followed whatever information reached them, hoping that somewhere, someone really had seen their daughter.
And over the years, there were stories.
Someone reportedly claimed Eunice had been seen on Galiano Island, where she was supposedly working for BC Hydro. Another person said they had seen her in Vancouver, getting onto a bus with a little boy, but had been unable to catch up with her.
For parents desperately searching for their missing child, reports like those could provide enormous hope.
But sadly, none of the sightings appears to have been confirmed.
Wendy eventually became skeptical of the stories. She believed that people may have thought they were helping, but unverified information repeatedly gave her parents hope without bringing them any closer to finding Eunice.
It created a particularly painful possibility for the family. If one of those sightings really had been Eunice, perhaps she had survived. Perhaps she had eventually built a life somewhere else. Perhaps the little boy reportedly seen with the woman in Vancouver had even been her child.
But there was never proof.
There was equally no proof that Eunice had died.
Her family was left suspended between those two possibilities for decades.
Wendy eventually began wondering whether the answer might be hidden somewhere in old records. During her testimony, she questioned whether RCMP archives might still contain information about Eunice, including records concerning any earlier occasions when she may have been considered a runaway. She also wondered whether fingerprints might exist that could potentially be compared against unidentified remains.
Importantly, Wendy was asking whether such records might exist. There is no publicly available evidence confirming that investigators possess Eunice’s fingerprints or that they have been compared with unidentified persons cases.
But her questions highlight something remarkable about Eunice’s disappearance: the passage of time may have created investigative possibilities that did not exist in 1964. Modern missing-person databases, DNA analysis, digitized historical records and greater coordination between jurisdictions have solved cases that once appeared impossible to resolve.
And Eunice has never stopped being someone’s missing sister.
Crystal Bird had not even been born when Eunice disappeared, yet she eventually became involved in efforts to keep her sister’s case alive. Wendy has credited Crystal with reaching out to organizations and initiatives dealing with missing Indigenous women so that Eunice’s name and story would continue to be remembered.
Friends remembered Snooksie as happy, friendly and kind – the sort of person who would help someone who needed it.
Decades after Eunice disappeared, someone reportedly posted in a Facebook group connected with Cassiar Cannery asking what had ever happened to her old friend Snooksie. Although the family wasn’t able to turn the post into a meaningful new lead, its existence meant something to Wendy.
After all those years, somebody outside of her immediate family still remembered her sister.
Eunice’s disappearance also sits within a much broader and painful history. The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls documented systemic failures experienced by Indigenous women, girls and their families, including problems involving police responses, racism, colonialism and institutional indifference. Eunice disappeared decades before those failures would receive sustained national scrutiny, but her family’s account of a missing Indigenous teenager reportedly being regarded as a runaway reflects concerns that would later emerge repeatedly in other cases.
Yet the central questions remain remarkably similar to the ones her family faced in 1964.
Who was driving the yellow sports car? Where was Eunice going when she got into it? Was she actually planning to travel to Quesnel? Who was the boyfriend she was reportedly going to see? Did she ever make it out of Prince Rupert? Were any of the reported sightings in later years really her?
And perhaps most importantly, what happened after Eunice disappeared from the lives of everyone who loved her?
There is currently no publicly identified suspect in Eunice’s disappearance, nor is there public evidence establishing that she was murdered. There is also no verified evidence that she deliberately disappeared and began a new life. Both possibilities – along with others – remain speculation unless new evidence emerges.
What remains is a hauntingly small collection of moments surrounding the disappearance of a teenage girl.
A final paycheque from a cannery. A birthday gathering. Reports of hitchhiking. An unidentified boyfriend somewhere in Quesnel. A yellow sports car in Prince Rupert…
And then, silence.
More than six decades later, Eunice Esther “Snooksie” Bird is still missing. Her parents spent years travelling through British Columbia looking for their daughter. Her sisters carried the search into another generation. Friends remembered her long after she vanished.
Somewhere within those old memories, records and stories may still be the piece of information that finally explains what happened to Snooksie.
If you have information on Eunice’s case, please contact any of the following:
Prince Rupert RCMP: 250-627-0700
Reference Case#: 2024-5261
Canada’s Missing Case reference: 2024055255
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: Information for this story was obtained from the Government of Canada’s Canada’s Missing database and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, including the April 8, 2018 statement of Eunice’s sister Wendy Redknap, Volume 398.
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