After several days of pulling cars from the Mille-Îles river north of Montreal, police say they will turn their attention to identifying the remainder of the submerged vehicles.
It is believed that there were 10 cars in the river close to a boat launch in Deux-Montagnes, with police working since the weekend to pull four from the river.
Police say it will do more harm than good for the environment to pull any other cars, although they will still send divers down to the remaining vehicles to record licence and vehicle information numbers to identify the vehicles.
It remains unclear why so many cars have ended up here, according to police, as they may have been dumped in the river or simply carried to this resting spot.
The search of the water began over the weekend, when a team of divers from Australia and the U.S. located a vehicle believed to be owned by Robert St. Louis, who has been missing for 37 years.
Exploring With a Mission is a group which conducts searches in waterways for missing people using sonar and divers.
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“We travel all over the world finding missing persons that are cold cases that have been lost for years where their families are looking for answers and what we do, is we bring them home,” Exploring With a Mission’s Bill McIntosh told Global News over the weekend.
St. Louis had been missing since leaving his home in Laval on June 14, 1998, leaving a family of five children wondering what became of their father. They put in a request to the Exploring With a Mission to find him.
St Louis was an avid fisherman who was regularly on the water in the area due to his hobby.
Exploring With a Mission began sweeping the area Saturday and found an “upside-down car that was square,” matching the description of St Louis’s Jeep Cherokee on Sunday morning. There were human remains inside.
A dive by Pritchard early Sunday confirmed the vehicle matched the description of the missing man’s vehicle. Pritchard also looked inside the vehicle and saw bones that he believes are human remains, McIntosh said.
“I just hope that they find some comfort and some relief with the fact that we were able to bring him home today,” McIntosh told Global News over the weekend.
The St Louis family told Global News that they are awaiting the results of a DNA test to confirm their father had been found. They previously have been given false hope that the mystery of his disappearance had been solved.
The Exploring With a Mission team was also behind the discovery of a body in a vehicle that was pulled from the St-François river in the province’s Mauricie region on July 12.
Police confirmed that the vehicle had belonged Yvon Guévin, a man who had gone missing in July 2014.
— with files from The Canadian Press
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
