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Three Sooke families, united in grief

Times Colonist6 February 2020p. A1Cindy E. Harnett, Times ColonistJDF SAR era

Cindy E. Harnett, Times Colonist. “Three Sooke families, united in grief”, Times Colonist, p. A1, 6 February 2020 ref-only

Summary

Three sets of parents who each lost a 20-year-old son in an accident on the raging Sooke River the previous week gathered on the Wednesday to console one another. "We are all coping in our own ways, but we are going to get through this together," said Shannon McInnes, mother of Eric Blackmore, following a meeting of the families at her home on Otter Point Road. Cory Mills, Eric Blackmore and A.J. Jensen disappeared on the Friday night, sparking a massive ground and air search. The pickup truck they were riding in was discovered in the fast-moving Sooke River on the Sunday, and the bodies of Mills and Blackmore were found the same day; Jensen's body was found on the Tuesday, downstream from the pickup. The paper had reported that the three friends were "puddle-jumping" the truck along Sooke River Road, which was covered in fast-moving water due to a heavy rainstorm. The river had risen more than six metres from the Friday to the Saturday because of the heavy rain, according to Juan de Fuca search-and-rescue manager Kathryn Farr. All three young men had been best friends since attending Grade 9 at Edward Milne Community School.

Written from the article text only. Where the scan is hard to read, the summary was taken from the page image rather than the OCR.

Details

Headline“Three Sooke families, united in grief”
PublicationTimes Colonist
Date6 February 2020
PageA1
BylineCindy E. Harnett, Times Colonist
EraJDF SAR era
Document typenews report
Original articleProQuest — the scanned page in the Times Colonist digital archive ↗
SourceProQuest Digital Times Colonist via GVPL (bulk export 2026-07-16)
Accessed2026-07-16
Licensingref-only
Record confidenceconfirmed

Archivist's note

The human aftermath of the February 2020 Sooke River drownings, published the day after the recovery reports. The six-metre rise in the river between Friday and Saturday, attributed here to Kathryn Farr, is the only measurement in the archive of the conditions that caused the deaths. The Sooke News Mirror leadership profile a week later was written in the same aftermath. This page was recovered from inside the ProQuest bulk export already held in the archive, where it had been listed as referenced but not held.

The clipping

Scan of Times Colonist, page A1, 6 February 2020 — the full page, shown because the article region could not be verified
The full page. The article region could not be verified automatically, so the whole page is shown rather than risk a clipping that cuts off the article. the full page is shown; no article region has been identified on it yet.

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These links leave this archive and point at the publisher. They may change or disappear — the scan held here is the archival copy.

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Archive notes

This is a full newspaper page and carries unrelated stories as well as the article summarised here. Summary read from the page image, because the OCR held for this page recovered too little to work from. SENSITIVE: three deaths, with families named and quoted at length, and photographs of the three men supplied by their families. Recovered from page 80 of the bulk export.

Record id 2020-02-06-times-colonist-pa1-sooke-river-search. Original file in the project archive: 02_articles/2026-07-16_proquest_bulk_export_50_articles_2012-2026.pdf (page 80).

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In the timeline

  • 4 February 2020Juan de Fuca search-and-rescue and RCMP continued the search for a missing man on the Monday.

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