MCSC marks 40 years of dedication
MCSC continues to help locate missing children and support their families.
In 2026, the Missing Children Society of Canada marks 40 years as an organization dedicated to helping find missing children and supporting their families.
Over those 40 years, methods used in the search for a missing child have changed dramatically, but the critical need for the service will always remain the same.
CEO Amanda Pick sums it up. "If you are not in a safe place, life changes."
The simple statement seems obvious, but it's terribly real for tens of thousands of Canadian children and youth every year who are forced to confront dangerous situations because they are no longer in a safe environment.
There are myriad reasons children and youth go missing. Some are abducted by parents lashing out in bitter custody battles, at times being taken outside Canada. Others are lured by strangers on the street, or increasingly in online forums. Youngsters have also been known to wander into danger, near rivers or dense forests. And in too many cases, vulnerable youth who run away struggle to find a secure environment.
In every case, family members, loved ones and support networks are left helpless, knowing someone they care about is missing and unsafe.
In 1986, Calgarian Rhonda Morgan started the Missing Children Society of Canada (MCSC), in part, because she believed the families of missing children needed ongoing support in their search.
"I learned early on that there is a lot of help in the first short while when a child goes missing," Morgan told the Calgary Herald in a 2003 profile. "The media is involved, the police, the whole community. Soon, everybody kind of has to go back to their own lives and the families were left with no resources."
Morgan, a trained private investigator, set up a team of investigators, including retired police officers, and worked to keep searches active even after they had faded from headlines. In their work, MCSC investigators shared their evidence and tips from the public with police departments. Marking their 25th year in operation, Morgan said they had helped police in more than 6,000 cases and had closed more than 1,600. As those numbers continue to grow over the four decades, MCSC has also helped officials locate missing children in nearly 60 countries around the world. 
It was an unprecedented result. "I believe that hope is present in every single case when it comes to a family searching for a missing child, and so to see hope last 31 years with a conclusion and a result of finding that child safely is a powerful thing," Pick told CBC news at the time of the reunion.
And while the Mann case made headlines around the world, the majority of cases are handled by the Missing Children Society of Canada with quiet perseverance and respect for the privacy of families facing some of their most challenging times. Few stories are made public beyond the initial plea for help in finding a missing child.
From its earliest days, MCSC provided affected families with knowledge and resources throughout the search and reunification, while ensuring that all its programs were free. That promise to families comes in part, thanks to individual and corporate donors that have committed to the organization for decades.
WestJet remains one of MCSC's longest corporate partners and over the years has provided hundreds of flights to unite parents with missing children and help investigators in their searches.
“WestJet is proud to stand alongside the Missing Children Society of Canada in their vital work to bring missing children to a place of safety," said April Crane, Vice President Communications and Engagement. "For nearly two decades, our partnership has been rooted in compassion, community, and the belief that every child deserves to be found.”
The Missing Children Society of Canada continues its work with police in their search for a missing child, although over the past 40 years of operation, the methods have evolved considerably.
In 1995 the Missing Children Society of Canada joined six other Canadian agencies, RCMP and other police departments in the use of an online database that included case information on missing children, with photographs, that could be accessed by anyone who had a personal computer and a modem to access the Internet. The site also included a toll-free information tip line. At the time, that story made front-page newspaper headlines.
In 2010, when Pick took over as executive director of MCSC, she prioritized getting the organization more active online, especially through social media, as evidence was showing that posts about missing children to Twitter or Facebook were reaching thousands of people quickly, with positive outcomes. In 2014, a campaign called Milk Carton 2.0 was launched that included encouraging the public to donate their Facebook and Twitter feeds for MCSC posts when a child went missing.
As technology advanced, so did the Missing Children Society of Canada.
In 2019 the new MCSC rescu app was announced in Calgary as an easy-to-use application that was created for the organization by Esri Canada and is populated, in part, with information on missing children cases pulled from databases by technology developed by Microsoft.
MCSC rescu is activated on smartphones and other devices and includes continuously updated information from police on missing children in Canada. Active cases are divided by region and tips on specific cases can be submitted with one click on the platform’s case page. Critically, users are also invited to share that case page to their contacts, through networks, including text, email and other social media such as Instagram, Facebook and X (formerly Twitter).
With the new app, police departments across the country were becoming more vocal in their support of the Missing Children Society of Canada's work. Cliff O'Brien, Calgary Police Service Deputy Chief, said police are aware they need help from the public in the search for a missing child.
“Every extra pair of eyes, every extra pair of ears ... can literally be the difference between life and death,” O’Brien said when MCSC rescu was announced in 2019.
For 40 years, the Missing Children Society of Canada has operated knowing that pausing for a moment can mean the difference between a person who stays missing and one who can be located and returned to safety. There's no giving up when there is too much at stake.
"Please know that we do not do this alone," said Ted Davies, an MCSC investigator for more than 25 years. "we rely on people from all walks of life, via charitable donations and tips, to succeed.
"There is no case ever put to rest, until it is solved."