Brother of missing man holds out hope he’s OK
Stewart Taylor of Corner Brook has been missing since June 7
CORNER BROOK — Growing up in Forresters Point on the Northern Peninsula, Gord and Stewart Taylor were more than brothers.
Only a year apart, they were like twins. Their mother dressed them alike and they did everything together.
Gord now lives in St. John’s and, as he stood next to a utility pole on West Street in Corner Brook on Thursday, he said they have remained close even when things with his brother were not going well.
Steward has battled with mental illness for about 20 years, Gord said as his eyes looked to the pole and the poster attached to it with the word “MISSING” across it in big red letters. Under the word is his brother’s picture.
Stewart Taylor, 61, has been missing since June 7.
“Day 11, Day 11,” said Gord, with a sense of worry and stress in his voice.
Gord had been on the Northern Peninsula visiting family since the day Stewart went missing and has been in constant contact with the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary to find out what’s happening in the search.
He’s headed back to St. John’s, but couldn’t leave until he stopped to see where his brother was last seen, the places he loved to frequent and to talk with his friends.
He was hoping the closeness they shared might give him a clue to his brother’s whereabouts.
“I came here hoping that sometimes you just think you’ll get a feeling, or you’ll get a premonition, or something.”
Sadly, he didn’t feel anything, but he doesn’t want to give up hope for his brother, and for the sake of Stewart’s daughter, his niece, who attends school in New Brunswick.
Gord doesn’t know what happened for Stewart to go missing, because he didn’t get a sense that anything was wrong when they last talked on June 3.
Stewart has had work and financial struggles over the last five years and had a relapse a few months ago, but he was doing better, Gord said.
“He was back on his medications, and he seemed to be doing good.”
He said Stewart was enjoying his life in Corner Brook. He had lived in the city for a year and a half before going to stay with a brother in Port Saunders last fall. He came back in March.
“He loved Corner Brook and getting back here was really important to him,” Gord said.
Gord said he expected to see Stewart while he was home because his brother had a court date in provincial court in Port au Choix on June 8.
On June 7, a friend of Stewart’s called Gord because he couldn’t reach him. Gord was in St. Barbe then and hadn’t heard from him. When he couldn’t get him, he contacted his niece. She also said she hadn’t heard from him and couldn’t reach him. Given how close they are, Gord felt that was strange.
“If she called and didn’t reach him, he’d call her back. Faithfully they talked.”
Gord thought Stewart might have been making his way to Port au Choix, so the next day he drove there, but Stewart never made it to his court appearance, and he was reported missing.
His last known whereabouts are on Broadway, not far from where he lived, near the intersection of the Lewin Parkway and Pier Road.
An image taken from video surveillance outside a Broadway store puts Stewart in the area at 5:54 a.m. on June 7.
Since then, there has been nothing else, Gord said.
“They’ve looked at hundreds and hundreds of videos from different cameras,” he said of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary’s investigation.
“There’s nothing that gives them a way of pinpointing even a general area (to search). The Bay of Islands is a big area, a lot of high points and low points geographically.”
So, Gord is appealing to anyone who may have been in the area when Stewart disappeared. He said they may have dash cam footage that could help, and any little piece of information they might consider insignificant could help.
Stewart did a lot of walking, often in the early morning, and often along the old railway track on the waterfront.
“He was a creature of habit and he loved people. He generally walked places where he had a chance of running into somebody and talking with somebody. He loved to interact with people. That was his nature,” said Gord.
Bob Day walked the railbed trail last week after Stewart went missing.
“And I could see now why he so enjoyed walking in there so much,” he said.
Day was one of the last people to see Stewart. The two friends spent most of June 5 together.
He met Stewart while selling tickets for the Lions Club at the Valley Mall last fall. Stewart had been a Lion on the Northern Peninsula and wanted to get involved again.
“He was so full of enthusiasm, like he was starting a new life,” Day said.
The two found they had a lot in common, interests in genealogy and Newfoundland history, and struck up a friendship. They got together regularly, and Day said Stewart would help anyone.
“He was doing volunteer work all over the place,” he said.
“But I don’t know what happened, somewhere along the line the system failed him,” said Day, who is hopeful his friend is OK.