‘Our hearts just sank’: Alberta family learns of son’s death in Victoria through Google search

Glen Grier says it would have been hard enough to learn of his son’s death 10 months ago from Victoria police or the B.C. Coroners Service.

Instead, last week, the father from Stony Plain, Alta. learned from a Google search that his 35-year-old son Scott had died, been cremated and buried in a Victoria cemetery without his knowledge.

“I’m not sure how to explain it. It’s been a wild one, a difficult one,” Grier said Friday. “Never mind researching it to make sure what you saw on Google is true. It makes it so much more difficult when you spend a whole day confirming it, making call after call.”

On Jan. 18, Grier and his wife, Michelle Grier, tried to reach Scott to wish him a happy birthday. Scott had struggled with addiction for four or five years. The last time they saw him was in the fall of 2019, when his father put him on a bus from Calgary to a healing centre in Sicamous. But Scott got twitchy by the third week, left the centre and made his way to Victoria.