Missing child email a hoax

If getting a load of junk mail in your post office box wasn’t enough, Jasperites have also been subjected to false emails about a missing boy over the last couple of weeks, sent on by residents as well as the Chamber of Commerce.

The email, which stated that 15-year-old Evan Trembley from Hockley Valley, Ontario, was missing, included a photo and a pleading note from the boy’s mother and a stamp of the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat logo.

Marilyne Aalhus, director of development at the Missing Children Society of Canada, based out of Calgary, said the email is a hoax that had been in circulation since Aug. 2007.

Describing the act as “bizarre,” Aalhus said the email contained no viruses and was usually just “people that decide that this was something interesting to see how fair it could be taken and it’s obviously gone on for a very long time.”

She explained that while this highlights the “bad” impact of the internet on her line of work, it is quite often a useful tool for investigators. “With the world out there now with this internet, its good and bad. In this particular case it makes things maybe a little bit more challenging for our investigators but in many cases it helps us a great deal.”

While the email hoax put an extra, unneeded, strain on the society, Aalhus said the organization would not seek legal consequences for the initiators of the email.

Since the email circulated through Jasper mailing lists, the Fitzhugh received an email from a resident who complained that the Chamber should not forward on such “drivel.”

Helen Kelleher-Empey, general manager of Jasper Tourism and Commerce, said the office normally only sends out business emails, but sent this because it was from a trusted business source who believed it was legitimate. “If we think we can help the community we’ll send it out,” Kelleher-Empey said.

Kelleher-Empey said the Chamber was sorry if anyone in the community was upset by the email, and that the office will have a “re-look at our communications and what we send out.”

The original source of the email, who spoke with the Fitzhugh on a condition of anonymity, was very apologetic. “It’s a miscommunication down the chain of who I received it from, and it’s unfortunate that it happened, and I don’t think the Chamber should be held responsible for it. I just don’t want their image to be tainted because it was something that seemed so official.”