‘We are just at a loss’: Family searches for answers a year after son’s disappearance at Quebec ski resort

Almost at one time a month for almost a twelvemonth, Kathleen Toman has left wing her place in Balsam Lake, Ont., for Mont-Tremblant, Que. This weekend, she’ll do the 500-kilometre trip again, meeting her ex-husband, Chris Toman, there. 

Together, they’ll try again to find anyone or anything that could help locate their son, Liam.

“Anything that would've happened might be a small clue,” Kathleen said in an interview. A selfie, an awkward encounter, a bit of small talk — no detail is too small. 

“Every time I do go back, however, I find out a little bit more information about something. Every single time.”

And yet, so far, nothing explains how her son, Liam Gabriel Toman, vanished from the ski resort in the early hours of Feb. 2, 2025.

On Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, Liam, 22, and two friends, Kyle Lemmings and Colin Warnock, hit the road for a long-anticipated ski weekend. As they rounded the last bend before Tremblant, the five-hour drive from Whitby, Ont., paid off.

“It just opens up, and then there's the hill with all the cabins on the side of it, and then the mountain just goes up,” Lemmings told Radio-Canada’s Enquête. €œIt's a pretty big eye shock for us because we don't see something like that very often.”  

They checked into their hotel, the Tour des Voyageurs II, and eased into their holiday.

Saturday unfolded as planned — a day on the slopes, a pizza dinner and a few drinks at a bar called Lucille’s. By then, it was freezing out, around –25 C. Just after 11 p.m., Lemmings retreated to the warmth of the room, leaving the other two to join clubgoers at Le P’tit Caribou. 

“We had a couple of more drinks and then kind of split up inside,” Warnock told Enquête. Shortly after 2 a.m., as the club began to empty, Warnock texted Liam. When he didn’t hear back, he called it a night. 

Video footage from Mont Tremblant bar

Liam didn’t return to the room that night. His friends assumed he’d crashed elsewhere, but still concerned, they pinged him again and took to the hill Sunday morning.

“I called once every hour,” said Warnock. €œAnd then after a couple hours, I was calling him twice an hour. And I started calling him three times an hour, and 20 calls later, we're, like: ‘OK, maybe … something is up, for sure.’”

By day’s end, they raised the alarm, contacting Liam’s family and the authorities. 

Liam’s father, Chris Toman, remembers getting the call just before 6 p.m. 

“I said, 'We need to talk to the police. We need to talk to the resort. Like, you know, we don't know where he is?'” he told Enquête.

A storm closed in as Chris, his wife Lara Toman, and Kathleen drove through the night and the snow to Tremblant.

“I couldn't believe how fast, but how long it felt as well,” Lara told Enquête.

In February, the Quebec provincial police, the Sûreté du Québec (SQ), searched for Liam for 12 days — on foot and horseback, by ATV and snowmobile, with dogs and from helicopters overhead. 

“The helicopter was flying so low, it was almost in my living room,” Mont-Tremblant resident Sylvie Blais told Enquête. Like many in the area, she felt compelled to help once she heard about Liam’s disappearance. 

Yves Delvallet, owner of Mont-Tremblant Cruises, turned his daily dog walks into a months-long, systematic search for Liam.

Liam’s mother was touched by the community support. 

“It gives you — I know it’s like a cliche — but … faith in humanity,” she said.

In March, a resort employee found Liam’s wallet near one of the parking lots. The discovery was significant enough that the SQ renewed its search.

Nothing.

After the snow melted, police combed the area one more time. 

Still nothing.  

With so few answers and her son still missing, Kathleen hit an impasse.

“When you're in this situation, you don't know what you need to do,” she said.

“You're not an investigator. You're not the police. You give all your hands to the police, you trust they know everything. So you just want to … you have to do something. You can't sit still. 

“You have to keep going and pushing to find any means to solve this because it's such a mystery. It does not make sense. None of the pieces make sense in your mind. You cannot rest.”

So she didn’t. And hasn’t since. 

Within days of Liam’s disappearance, the Tomans began getting the word out. One of his childhood friends, Shireen Khamissa, took charge of social media. She approached the resort about sharing her posts and was surprised when they initially declined. 

Khamissa and the Tomans were disappointed and didn’t give up with the resort. But there were other fronts to work on, too. 

They started making media contacts. They agreed to interviews, for the press, for television. They returned to Tremblant and made their own inquiries.

“I have books of notes from the beginning of the investigation,” Kathleen said. €œAlso, Chris and I have PowerPoints of our collaborative notes. So yeah, we've become, together, investigators of our own.” 

Then, Kathleen discovered Radio-Canada’s investigative journalism program, Enquête. She contacted host Marie-Maude Denis and within days, they were retracing Liam’s last-known steps at Tremblant together. 

The SQ met with the Enquête team to brief them on the investigation. 

“When doing an investigation about missing persons, everything is on the table,” a spokesperson from the SQ said in an interview. 

Together, the Enquête team and the Tomans tracked down several of the last people who had seen Liam that night. They spoke with merchants and residents and gathered images from security cameras. 

In September, the SQ shared some surveillance footage. Edited together with the clips Kathleen had collected, the footage shows a clear picture of Liam’s movements after he left Le P’tit Caribou.  

Walking through Mont Tremblant village

After Enquête’s report aired in November 2025, the SQ received tips they followed up on. None led to information that helped locate Liam. 

A $10,000 reward offered for information leading to Liam’s whereabouts was also increased to $50,000 following Enquête’s report. That, too, has yet to generate new leads. 

The ski resort also changed its position. Tremblant representatives met with the Tomans and launched a new awareness campaign across the resort.

The SQ’s investigation is ongoing. It has yet to determine whether a criminal motive is involved. 

“It’s a disappearance that’s pretty rare,” said the SQ’s spokesperson, citing the lack of clear evidence explaining why Liam is missing. 

“It’s important for the public to think the unthinkable. Any shred of information can be crucial.”  

While the investigation gives Liam’s mother purpose, it also comes at a cost. 

“You spend so many days busy and doing and co-ordinating,” she said. €œAnd then there's days where you're just crawled up in a ball and not moving.

“And then you go: ‘My gosh, we'll have to keep going for Liam. Liam wouldn't want to see me like this. Oh my gosh, he'd want me to keep fighting and keep going and looking and investigating. So then you focus, you focus on the fact of what you're doing, you get up and go.”

And so, with the resort now collaborating, they’re going back to Tremblant to raise awareness that their son is missing. They’ll also be having meetings with the resort, the police and the municipality.

Kathleen said each of these visits takes its toll, compounded this time by the approaching anniversary. 

“One year — it's not something you want to celebrate. It's not something you want to acknowledge, that it is actually one year. But, you do want to, for Liam. You want to say ‘this has been too long. This is a year. What is, where is he, what's going on?’”

SQ investigators will be in Mont-Tremblant village on Jan. 31 to meet anyone who has information to share. 

Living with so many loose ends and no sign of her son leaves Liam’s mother feeling unmoored.

“You can't explain that to anybody, what it's like living without an answer. You can’t even explain it to yourself. So how can you explain it to anybody else?”

But of one thing she’s sure.

“We are just at a loss. This is what it's done to our family: we're at a complete loss.”

The Sûreté du Québec is asking anyone who may have seen Liam Toman or has details that could help investigators to contact the SQ’s information line at 1-800-659-4264.

Michelle Gagnon is a producer for the fifth estate.

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