The daughter of a 60-year-old Thompson woman missing since May 17 says it isn’t like her mother to be out of touch for so long and is asking people in Thompson to check their surroundings for anything that might help to locate Dianne Mae Bignell.
“All we are asking is that the people of Thompson take a look around their yards and home to see if there is anything that may point to our mother’s whereabouts,” said Dianne’s daughter Clara. “She likes to hang around downtown Thompson. Every little bit of information helps. She is an elder and diabetic, she may not be thinking clearly. We need her to come home.”
Dianne Bignell was last seen by one of her nieces on the morning of May 17 – her birthday – on Hemlock Crescent in the Juniper area. Clara says her mother wears glasses and has shoulder-length hair, more grey than black. She is Indigenous, 5’4” tall with a heavy build and was last seen wearing a dark jacket, grey shoes and royal blue pants with two stripes down the side. She walks with a limp.
It is unlikely that Dianne could have gone very far on foot, says her daughter.
“She has bad knees and she had a sore hip,” Clara said.
Dianne would always let her brother Clifford, with whom she shares an apartment, know if she wasn’t going to return home, her daughter says.
“It’s not like her to be gone this long,” said Clara. “Every time she’d leave she’d always phone and let my uncle know she was OK if she didn’t come home at night. She’d be home about nine if not earlier.”
Clara says her family has heard that Dianne had been seen in the company of a man who is now in Selkirk.
“I haven’t even located him,” Clara said. “I haven’t got a chance to talk to him. A lot of people say she was seen with him.”
And while Clara had to leave Thompson June 7 to return to her home in Brandon and her children after two-and-a-half weeks of daily searching from morning to nightfall, Dianne has other family members in Thompson, including her brother and nieces as well as a sister in Thicket Portage and they are determined to find Dianne and will continue to organize searches out of their headquarters at the Miner Room in the Burntwood Hotel.
“The searches will be going on,” Clara says. “We’re not going to give up. We’re going to bring my mom home one way or another.”
She asks that people of Thompson keep their eyes open when they are out and about on walking paths or in their own yards for anything suspicious or unusual and to contact her at 204-724-7905 or the Thompson RCMP detachment at 204-677-6911 if they have any information about where Dianne may be.
