Questions remain surrounding the death of a West Vancouver girl and the disappearance of her father after an incident on the water off Gambier Island over the weekend.
The victims have been identified as 60-year-old William Liebenberg, a popular North Vancouver dentist, and his six-year-old daughter Maddie.
The two left from Lions Bay Marina earlier during the day on Saturday. A boater spotted their 20-foot aluminum hard-top boat adrift around 9:30 p.m. and called for help.
The keys were in the ignition and their belongings were still on board.
The Joint Rescue Coordination Centre called in two Coast Guard hovercraft, a rescue boat as well as a cormorant helicopter and three Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue units.
Searchers in the helicopter spotted Maddie in the water a few hours into the search but there was no sign of Liebenberg. The water in Howe Sound that night was 19°C.
“In waters that temperature, a healthy person has a good chance of retaining the ability to self-rescue for a longer period of time, maybe making it to shore or clinging to something that was floating in the area,” said Maj. Justin Olsen, with the rescue centre.
Authorities called off the search late on Sunday. RCMP now have taken over the investigation and are treating it as a missing person case.
“(The Coast Guard) said the average person in those waters would be able to survive for 11 hours,” said Staff Sgt. Vishal Mathura, Sunshine Coast RCMP spokesman. “They conducted their search for over 20 hours, just going up and down the coast trying to find him. Unfortunately, given the tides and everything, if the person were unconscious, they would have moved out of that search area and probably would not have survived.”
Maddie’s body has been turned over to the B.C. Coroners Service and Sunshine Coast RCMP are now treating Liebenberg as a missing person.
“We are still investigating the events that led to them departing in the boat and also what transpired on the boat,” Mathura said on Monday. Anyone who saw them that day is asked to contact Sunshine Coast RCMP.
As of Tuesday, the B.C. Coroners Service had not yet established a cause of death for Maddie.
No one with the RCMP, coroner or Joint Rescue Coordination Centre could say whether the girl was wearing a life jacket.
Liebenberg will be greatly missed by his patients, including Janet West, a fellow South African expat who had been treated by Liebenberg for 21 years. West would drive all the way from her Abbotsford home to see Liebenberg.
“Once a patient of William, always a patient of William. He was extremely passionate about his work and a perfectionist at it. It wasn’t just a job for him. It was an art, which he perfected,” West said. “He was gentle, he was kind, he was generous. Earlier this year I was going through a tough financial time and William offered to do two crowns for me for the price of one. What other dentist does that?”
Maddie would have been returning to Grade 2 at école Pauline Johnson elementary in West Vancouver in September.
“We are aware of it and we have responded to our school community and the teachers and staff,” said Bev Pausche, district spokeswoman.
Counsellors will be made available for students upon their return.
