The $10,000 reward offered to help bring Marcus McKay home

A new billboard near Mallard, Manitoba is offering a $10,000 reward for information about a 23-year-old missing persons cold case, part of a province-wide campaign aimed at helping to bring lost loved ones home.

Marcus McKay was only eight years old when he went missing near Bison Road in Mallard, Manitoba on July 15, 2000.

The Manitoba Metis Federation (MMF) is now launching an advertising campaign to try and help bring him home.

"We're going to try and have billboards across the province of Manitoba, to make sure that our citizens and their families are reunited," said Frances Chartrand, vice president of the federation's Northern Metis

Council.

Chartrand was in Mallard on the day McKay went missing, helping with the massive search effort. "We went out there, helped look, and the RCMP came down, the army came down, we had hundreds of volunteers that went walking through the bush to try and find out where he was," said Chartrand.

More than 23 years later, the MMF is launching a province-wide advertising campaign as part of their Pey Key Way Ta Hin/Bring Me Home program.

"This program was set up to bring the family members home that were missing or murdered, and so there was a $1,000,000 fund established," said Anita Campbell, spokeswoman for Infinity Women Secretariat, which works with Metis women throughout Manitoba.

Beginning in 2021, the program would offer a $10,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of missing and murdered Indigenous people.

"So it's creating an awareness to help us help our families in our communities find their missing and murdered loved ones," said Campbell.

The MMF is also offering $10,000 for information that helps locate Jennifer Catcheway, who went missing on her 18^th birthday on June 19, 2008. Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Catcheway or McKay can call Crimestoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).

McKay's family was on hand for an emotional Friday morning as his billboard was unveiled, very close to the spot where he actually disappeared.

Chartrand says the billboard is in a very visible location. "Right at that corner, as you drive into the community, you'll see the big picture, big billboard of Marcus," she said. "So maybe someone will remember something."