How Could They Just Lose Him?

The Huronia Regional Centre was supposed to be a safe home for people with disabilities. Then, amid suspicions of abuse at the facility, twenty-one-year-old Robin Windross vanished without a trace

- ZANDER SHERMAN

THE PHONE RANG late on November 15, 1977. Betty and Allan Bellchambers were getting ready for bed when a man's voice broke the news: Robin Windross, Betty's twenty-one-year-old son, was missing. Betty collapsed, and Allan angrily said a few words "I should not have said," he later admitted in a legal declaration.

For sixteen years, the Huronia Regional Centre had provided Windross's care. How could they just lose him? HRC was a sprawling institution in Orillia, a ninety-minute drive north of Toronto, for children and adults with intellectual disabilities.

Founded in 1876, it was one of Ontario's oldest and largest facilities. There were multiple buildings overlooking Lake Simcoe and, on the other side of the road, a farm and a cemetery. Windross had grown up in the centre's children's wards and had been transferred to cottage C, an adult ward, close to the time of his disappearance.

According to Allan, Windross was terrified of cottage C. Betty and Allan got the impression that bad things happened there. They say their son turned into a different boy after the transfer-they knew he wasn't happy but didn't know what they could do without evidence.

Now Windross was gone-vanished into a damp Ontario fall.

Shortly after midnight, according to the missing person's report, an officer with Orillia Police Service took down the statement of the person who had last seen Windross, an HRC counsellor named T.A. Anderson. According to Anderson, Windross and other residents had boarded a bus to see a hockey game at a community centre. Windross had gone to the game and been returned to HRC, according to Anderson, at which point he'd gone missing.