Toman family seeks answers in Mont-Tremblant one year after son's disappearance

Bitterly cold air settles over Mont-Tremblant, but it’s nothing for the thousands of skiers who have flocked there for a weekend getaway. Skis scrape against packed snow as music spills from nearby bars, giving the town of about 12,000 residents a European feel. It’s an ordinary winter day — a place to enjoy Canada’s four seasons.

Kathleen Toman is not here for winter fun.

She stands near a temporary command post set up by La Sûreté du Québec, who are still searching for clues in the disappearance of her son, Liam Gabriel Toman. He was 22 when he went missing from the ski resort exactly one year ago.

Despite a full calendar year passing, police have said they very little to go on. Kathleen remains hopeful there are still new leads to follow — a sighting of her son on someone’s Snapchat story from a year ago, forgotten security footage, or someone who may have crossed paths with Liam that night.

For the Toman family, that timing is intentional. Mont-Tremblant is just over two and a half hours from Ottawa. Each winter, people from the capital make the same drive north, ski the same runs, gather in the same bars, then return home to do it again at the same time and same place next year. They hope something that might have felt ordinary last year is a missing puzzle piece they’ve been searching for. 

“Tourists quite often travel on the same day, week, as each year,” she told the Ottawa Lookout. “So we’re here because we’re trying to see if we can capture any information or leads of people that might remember something from the year before, or have anything in their photos or social media that they can share.”

What drives her back on a nearly weekly basis is a conviction she has not shaken.

“I really, truly believe that somebody knows something,” Kathleen said. “And maybe somebody is afraid to say something.”

It was a Friday when Liam and his friends made the roughly seven-hour drive from Whitby to Mont-Tremblant for a weekend of skiing. The trip had been planned for months — something Liam had been counting down to, his father Chris Toman said. It was meant to be a final burst of freedom before adulthood fully set in.

“He had planned this for months and was looking forward to it,” Chris said in a virtual interview. “It was kind of the last thing he wanted to do before he started getting a real job.”

Saturday was for the hill. After a full day of skiing, the group grabbed pizza in the village. Later that night, one friend returned to the hotel, while Liam and another friend headed out to a few bars, eventually winding up at Le P’tit Caribou — a popular and crowded nightlife spot in the heart of the resort.

At some point, the two friends lost sight of each other in the packed bar.

“It was quite a crowded establishment,” Chris said.

After a few hours, Liam walked back to his hotel. He mistakenly texted his dad instead of his friend, asking him to meet outside. That would be the last text sent from his phone.

“Liam texts a lot,” Chris said. “It is part of the reason why we know the disappearance is not of his own accord. He would reach out.”

But after that exchange, the messages stopped.

When Liam’s friends woke up the next morning and realized he hadn’t returned to the hotel, they were surprised — but not yet alarmed. They assumed he may have met someone and stayed elsewhere. They went out skiing, trying to reach him throughout the day. By late afternoon, after more than 20 unanswered messages and calls, concern began to mount.

Chris said the moment it became clear something was wrong came hours later, when Liam still hadn’t surfaced.

“He wouldn’t miss a day of skiing,” he said. “So when he had no communication whatsoever, that’s when we knew something was wrong.”

The call chain moved quickly after that. Liam’s stepbrother contacted Chris, who immediately urged the friends to file a missing-person report. Within the hour, Chris, his wife Lara, and Kathleen were packing and heading to Mont-Tremblant — driving through a snowstorm toward a place they would come to know far too well.

“We’re on the phone with the police, raising the missing persons,” Chris said. “They were like, well, he’s 22 years old and drinking. I said, ‘No, this is not in his character.’”

Security footage later helped the family piece together the last known moments before Liam vanished. The video shows him leaving Le P’tit Caribou, walking toward the hotel, and briefly speaking with two men outside. He appears to point in the direction of the hotel before continuing on.

“He comes back, he walks towards — he does not enter his hotel,” Kathleen said. “And right around the corner, there’s nothing.”

From that point on, the trail ends.

There has been no further phone activity, no social media use, and no confirmed sightings. Both Kathleen and Chris say nothing in Liam’s behaviour that night suggests he was vulnerable or impaired.

“Liam was walking with purpose,” Kathleen said. “He was multitasking with his phone, texting. He was in great shape. He was dressed appropriately. It’s a mystery. We can’t understand it.”

Today, Liam’s face is on posters all around Mont-Tremblant. They hang in storefront windows and on the ski lifts, advertising a $50,000 reward for anyone who is able to come forward with information.

A year later, his family says seeing them never gets easier.

Lara Toman, Liam’s stepmom, said she can still feel his presence in Mont-Tremblant. The two have been close since they were first introduced when he was only nine.

“At home, you’d know when he arrived because you’d hear it,” she said. Hockey or UFC would be on, voices rising from the TV room as Liam and his stepbrother Ryan shouted at the screen, laughing and arguing in the way only family can.

“If his friend Ryan was there… they would just be yelling at the TV… and laughing,” Lara said. “And then he disappeared into his room.”

Liam could be loud and social one moment, then vanish for hours the next, headphones on, immersed in whatever had captured his attention. Music was one of those things.

“He had a passion for making music, his beats,” Lara said. “He would get into like, three hours of making songs.” She added that he never released them publicly, but shared them with friends — small creations made for connection, not attention.

He was practical, too — always tinkering and building. Lara recalled midweek trips to pick up computer parts, quick McDonald’s dinners grabbed on the way home, and weekends spent moving between friends, family, and hobbies.

In late March, as the snow began to melt, Liam’s wallet was found near the entrance to the resort’s parking lot, with identification and his hotel key inside. Money that the family believes Liam was carrying was missing.

Kathleen has said it wasn’t something that should have easily fallen out.

“He keeps his wallet in a zip pocket,” she said. “It’s not like it’s just loose.”

That search for answers is what has brought the family to Mont-Tremblant more than a dozen times in the last year. They have knocked on every door and met with almost all the business owners.

Lara described the emotional toll as “ambiguous grief,” the kind that doesn’t come with certainty or an ending.

“You don’t have a closure, right?” she said. “We’ve lost him by disappearance. We don’t know.”

Chris said they’ve tried to turn that energy into action by spreading more awareness and applying increased pressure for the resort to make security upgrades. In mid-January, the family took their concerns to council, but change does not happen overnight. He said it involved multiple groups — police, the municipality, and resort partners. They also launched a petition.

“To see Liam’s last steps unravel on public TV and then stop — if they had a little more surveillance, we would not be left with some of the questions we have,” he said. “We have found out there are blind spots, and people have told us that if you are going to do something nefarious, the P1 parking lot is a dark zone. There are cameras, but it gives a false sense of security because they don’t record.”

Chris said he hopes the family will have the opportunity to do a walkthrough with security to discuss how to make the resort safer for guests, adding that the municipality is in the midst of conducting an audit to improve security.

More than 260 kilometres of ground has been searched looking for Liam, with searches also taking place in the waters around Mont-Tremblant and from the sky. 

Last November alone, four searches were conducted. Chris and Kathleen plan to make another trip in the spring to retrace their steps again and cover new ground in hopes of finding a missing clue.

Online, there have been countless theories about what happened to Liam — from getting lost in the woods to human trafficking and a party gone wrong. Some have also compared it to the disappearance of Ryan Shtuka, who went missing from a similar ski resort in Sun Peaks, B.C., in February 2018.

Liam’s family says they don’t know what happened to their son, but they are not looking to engage in conspiracies.

“The hypotheses that have gone through my head are astronomically large,” Kathleen said. “But at this point, I just stick to the facts that I know.”

Chris said he too does not have one theory — but fully believes Liam did not disappear of his own will — and that it was either malicious intent or a horrible accident.

Over the past year, tips have continued to come forward, including from people who wish to remain anonymous. They are always passed on to police and are what Chris believes will eventually lead to answers.

“For the people who think they are in the clear, we will find you. The SQ will find you. We want them to know that we’re not going away,” he said. “Somebody will get drunk at a party and open their mouth, or break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend and finally say ‘I can't take it anymore.’ 

“We hope that somewhere… they feel it in their heart or clear their conscience to come forward and share the story of what happened.”