Without a trace
Without a trace
By Trevor Wilhelm, Windsor Star October 21, 2009
''WINDSOR, Ont. — Some days it would be easier for Amanda Farnham to just know that her mom is dead.''
''Campeau, who was 40 when she was last seen, is one of 1,573 women across Canada currently listed as missing. She disappeared April 18, 2001, leaving her children Amanda and Joe, now 30, adrift in a sea of sorrow and confusion.
Campeau may have been headed for Bracebridge, Ont., about 200 km north of Toronto, where she had an old boyfriend. Windsor police said she also went to Detroit a lot, as well as Sudbury in northern Ontario where she had family.
Her ex-husband Gerry Farnham reported her missing after she didn't show up on Mother's Day and her son's birthday. It was out of character.
The two had taken different paths in life — Campeau fought an often losing battle with drug addiction. But if there was anything Gerry Farnham still knew about his ex-wife, it was that her kids took a back seat to nothing.
Even when Campeau was out of town or unable to see her children, she called on the important days.
"She never missed a birthday or Christmas," said Gerry, well known in Windsor as the president of CAW Local 195. "When those things started to happen, that was really peculiar. Even in the worst of times when she was struggling, she always, always kept contact with her children. She was a good mom. Those kids were her life."
Nearly nine years after Debbie Campeau suddenly disappeared without a trace, it's not knowing her mother's fate — and the faint sliver of hope that won't let go — that is most painful.''
