The disappearing place

British Columbia's Picturesque Highways, 1942

Photo Credit: Blizzy 63 Flickr 

Name: Helen Claire Frost

Identifying Characteristics: Caucasian female. Blue eyes and brown-blonde hair. About 5 feet 5 inches. 125 pounds. 

Occupations: Table busser, berry picker, painter, laborer. 

Status: Missing for 55 years, 4 months, and 7 days. 

In the fall of 1970, Helen Claire Frost slipped her arms into the sleeves of a navy nylon parka, wiped cold coffee from the corners of her mouth, and set out for a short walk from the Prince George apartment she shared with her sister Sandy. Authorities know she made it as far as the Husky gas station. They know she was four days shy of her eighteenth birthday. They know she had recently given birth to a daughter, Sandra Jeanette.

What they don’t know, is what happened next.

Theories flourished. Runaway. Suicide. Accident. Homicide. Answers, however, proved less abundant. In 2009, Sandy Frost disclosed that her father had told her, “I really hope I know what happened before I die.” Dennis Roy Frost died on July 20, 2014. Helen remains missing.

Highway of Tears Corridor

Photo Credit: OpenStreetMapContributors

The highway of tears

Chronologically, Helen is the first recorded disappearance along what Florence Naziel coined as “The Highway of Tears” in 1998. Described as a warm and eccentric Elvis-loving character with bleached blonde hair and a fondness for leopard print, the term came to the Wet’suwet’en mother and grandmother during a vigil walk in memory of the disappeared.

Specifically, it refers to a 720-kilometer-long span of Yellowhead Highway 16 that connects the towns of Prince George and Prince Rupert in British Columbia, Canada. Since 1970, this tract of land has been the site of eighteen documented disappearances, although local indigenous groups believe the number is closer to fifty. As of 2026, nearly every case remains unsolved.

Highway 16

Photo Credit: Kevin Dooley

“Another drunk Indian”

A series of explanations has been proposed to elucidate how this small stretch of pavement became a place of nightmares, how an entire country came to cultivate a years-long toleration of crime and stifled progress. Rampant poverty leads to low rates of vehicle ownership, making hitchhiking the only form of mobility for many rural British Columbians to access work, school, and medical treatment. Additionally, the region is plagued by drug abuse and domestic violence, scars of the now infamous Canadian Indian residential school system.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Reserve Constable Wayne Clary, who has worked these cases for decades, believes racism has played the central role: 

“Racism? Absolutely. Along Highway 16, we have vulnerable women because of what the Canadian government did to Indigenous peoples and their history. How they tore out a generation, how they weakened a family structure [through residential schools] - that doesn’t get fixed overnight.”

In the words of Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief Terry Teegee, the stench of death in rural BC blossoms from the earliest roots of colonialism: “This goes along with 152 years of colonization. Our women are looked at as ‘another drunk Indian’."

TCH-Yellowhead 16

Ryan Craig

The finding place

There are still those who are trying to change the narrative surrounding Highway 16, from a place of loss to a place of resilience. In 2005, the RCMP founded the Project E-Pana Task Force to determine whether a serial killer, or killers, is responsible for murdering young women traveling along major highways in BC. In 2023, billboards sponsored by the families of the missing and murdered were erected along the highway to raise awareness and warn women not to hitchhike. In 2025, five cell towers were installed along the corridor to aid resource extraction efforts, which activists hope will have the unintended benefit of improving communication and safety for travelers.

Highway 16

Photo Credit: Gripso_Banana_Prune Flickr

The lost ones

More than fifty years after Helen Frost vanished into the chill night air, Chelsey Amanda Quaw’s body was discovered in a wooded area just north of Highway 16, one month after she disappeared while stepping outside for a cigarette. Her murderer has yet to be found.

To some, she will just be a name on a list. Another entry in the ‘quirk’ that is Highway 16. But she was also a beloved member of her Saik’uz First Nation community. A daughter and sister whose family will miss her dearly. Mary Teegee, a leader from the Highway of Tears Governing Body, laments that efforts to solve the case appear to be conforming to old patterns:

“Why were there not RCMP helicopters, why weren't there RCMP dogs, why wasn't there more RCMP boots on the ground?...I don't think that Pam [Heron] should have had to prove that Chelsey was not a drug addict...Imagine if this was a young white girl out of West Vancouver. Would the mother have to be [calling for] more RCMP involvement, for more of an investigation?"