It is hard for the Bompas family to appreciate the beauty of Francois Lake, although they go each year and gaze out over its picturesque waters.
They have done so for 25 years, and always on Father's Day - the day in 1988 when their son went beneath the lake's surface and did not come back.
Ronald Bompas, then 22, was an enthusiastic young employee of a local car dealership tjat was holding its annual company fishing derby.
The anguish of that June day in 1988 was fresh again this year as the Bompas family anxiously awaited news from a search party scanning the bottom of Francois Lake looking for Syd Neville, also the victim of a fishing incident:
"It's hard to remain relatively sane, waiting to find out who it really was, and not hearing anything from the authorities," said Ronald's father, Al Bompas. "Our hopes soared initially for Syd's family when they announced they found someone, but then we found out it wasn't him and went into a tailspin."
He, wife Elaine, Ronald's two brothers and one sister have never let his memory diminish. They go each year on their pilgrimage of love and respect, and can't stop the flood of memories. Bompas said he still distinctly recalls helping Ronald polish his fishing lures the night before the derby. He also remembers a week of torture as searchers combed the surface and shorelines for any signs.
RCMP divers also took part in the search but even they felt the lake's cruelty. Three dive team members required hospital attention, one contracting a case of the bends (decompression sickness) that had to be treated in Vancouver.
Those injuries healed but not so for the Bompas family.
"It never goes away," Bompas said. "The not knowing part is what hurts the most. You do all kinds of emotional things like swear at the sky and pick fights with God. None of it is wrong, and nothing helps, and it goes on and on."
Bompas added his voice to renewed calls for a centralized, affordable team with the equipment and training to go after people lost underwater.
Meanwhile, the search for Neville goes on at depths in the range of 200 metres (700 feet) or more and authorities work to notify the next of kin of the as-yet publicly unnamed victim they unintentionally found in the process. Sadly, Bompas acknowledged, his son and Neville are hardly the only ones who went to rest in that lake and were never seen again.
