Family prays Moldowan is still alive

Around 4:00 p.m. on Sat June 13, Devon Brock Moldowan left his apartment in Jasper, wandered out into the afternoon sunshine and has not been in contact with his friends or family since - a fact that his father, Larry Moldowan, wishes would change. He now asks his son to “call us, he knows the number.”

Leaving his girlfriend, wallet and all of his identification at home, Devon Moldowan - a talented musician - headed off wearing his baggy black pants with yellow and orange stitching, a zip-up hoody and a pair of black skate shoes.

Devon Moldowan was clean-shaven when he left home that day, despite having a beard he wore proudly since his teenage years. He’s described as 185 cm tall, average build, blue eyes and long, wavy reddish/brown hair.

About an hour or so later, the 25-year-old updated his status on Facebook, from a computer that wasn’t his own, and wrote: “Devon Brock Moldowan doesn’t get it, probably never will. Sorry, everyone, more than I can ever say. Onward to space adventures.”

“It’s sort of a cryptic thing,” said Larry Moldowan, who wasn’t sure what to make of the posting.

“One particular reference, the thing that ‘Devon doesn’t get and never will get’ - I don’t know whether this is just despondency, that’s sort of what I feel.”

But the ‘onward to space adventures’ reference was a little more worrying, at least for police. “That refers to the afterlife,” explained Larry Moldowan, “that’s why at first the police thought that suicide was a possibility.”

Despite this original theory, the possibility was ruled out once his son was sighted the next day.

“We don’t know what happened, but generally if somebody is going to commit suicide... once they have that in mind to go that particular route, they go ahead and do it,” his father explained. “They don’t wait 24 hours... they do it now, so therefore since he was alive, 24 hours later, I don’t think that is the case.”

Regardless of what the post meant, the night rolled on and Devon Moldowan didn’t return home. However, within the 24 hours of his last Facebook update the Manitoban-born Jasperite was sighted within 100 yards of the Sawridge Inn and Conference Centre at the east end of Jasper, according to his father.

That sighting is what keeps him going.

“You just sort of live in hope, you pray a lot... I think the fact that Devon was sighted someplace at the edge of Jasper 24 hours after the police initiated their search gives us hope that he’s still alive,” he said adding that his son “wasn’t hitching, (but) was just walking along the highway”.

While he might not have been hitching a ride then, Larry Moldowan said the idea of his son hitching home “did occur to us, so we’ve attempted to cover all bases in that regard.”

“The possibility is, that he may be held up in somebody’s place just trying to get his head together as to what he should do next, I don’t know.”

“We don’t know,” he added, “we just hope he’s still alive and coming back to us.”

Jasper RCMP, who Larry Moldowan calls “absolutely awesome,” aren’t treating the disappearance as suspicious. According to Larry Moldowan, his son wasn’t running from the law, or anyone else, and had no reason to be hiding out, other than maybe giving himself some time to think.

Born in Stonewall, Manitoba, Devon Moldowan first came to Jasper in the summer of 2008 with his girlfriend. After a few hours in town, he found a job.

Leaving their home and jobs in Winnipeg for what his father called a “three month hiatus” the pair headed back to Jasper about two-months ago.

“But this year, the economic climate in Alberta is not the same, so his girlfriend got a job and Devon had some temporary work for a few days and a job lined up to start some place in the second or third week of July,” explained Larry Moldowan, “but you can’t survive if you’re not working for a month.”

Moldowan’s life partner, who wishes to remain anonymous, found work quickly in town, which Larry Moldowan said probably didn’t help Devon’s mood.

According to his father, the 25-year-old arrived in Jasper hopeful and optimistic, but his mood slowly diminished as he struggled to find a job and doubts were created in his mind. “What went through his mind, I don’t know,” his father said, “[but] I know he was down because he hadn’t found a job yet and that gets you thinking in all kind of directions that you ordinarily wouldn’t think.”

“Every time you go out and find that you aren’t hiring, you aren’t hiring, it creates doubts that maybe we shouldn’t have done this and stayed where we were because it’s not working out according to what we had hoped,” he added.

It was Devon Moldowan’s girlfriend of one year that reported him missing, a report that resulted in the two on-duty Jasper RCMP officers as well as two off-duty officers, with the assistance of Parks Canada, searching areas that were of particular distinction to Devon - Athabasca Falls, Old Fort Point, Maligne Canyon were all searched, said Cst. Chad Benko.

For all of Devon’s independence, which saw him leave Stonewall and move to Winnipeg at 18 and end up in Jasper, his father said he would always maintain regular contact with his family and friends.

“He had phoned my wife on Mother’s Day,” he explained, “said he didn’t have a job yet but he was looking and he was hopeful.”

Breaking away from this character trait, Devon Molodwan has now been out of contact for over two-and-a-half weeks.

Trying to span as much geographical space as possible, the Moldowan family have placed an advertisement in Edmonton’s Vue Weekly, which is a magazine of choice for Devon Moldowan. “Maybe this is the kick in the pants, that’s needed to say ‘well maybe, wait a minute, I’m being childish by hiding out’ or whatever,” explained his dad.

Anyone with any information on the whereabouts of Devon Moldowan is asked to contact the Jasper RCMP at 780-852-4421 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS).