'It's been a lot of heartache': Sisters of Lennox Island man still searching for answers

Kelly Sark and Val Jadis were getting ready to have cake with their family when they heard the latest news. 

This was last Monday, on what would have been their brother Jamie Sark's 29th birthday. 

Sark's body was found Nov. 12 in a heavily wooded area on Lennox Island First Nation. He had been missing from his home in the community since late August. 

Kelly Sark said just as her family was getting ready to cut the cake in her brother's memory, they learned that RCMP officers investigating his case were conducting searches at two Lennox Island properties. 

In the family's first major interview since the young man's remains were found, Sark said the news about the searches felt like a step forward. 

"Everything happened all of a sudden. It was kind of, like, bittersweet, but it was good to see things start to happen," she told CBC News. 

For Jadis, last week's development in this case brought a sense of hope after months of heartache for her family — hope that the investigation is moving forward and getting closer to finding out about what happened to Jamie.

"It's been a lot of heartache since Jamie went missing, since my mom put out the post that he wasn't around," she said. "So we started looking, like messaging him and everything — and I don't know. You just get this gut feeling that something is really wrong." 

After their brother vanished, Sark and Jadis spent countless days searching for him. That search began within the community of Lennox Island and circled out to the surrounding woods and fields before eventually expanding to Nova Scotia. The family also offered a $5,000 reward for information.

Jadis said she's grateful to everyone in the community who came out to help with the search.

"We had a solid crew with us every time we wanted to go to the woods. We had strangers help us make posters and put those up," she said. 

Sark said it was good to see support from communities outside P.E.I., specifically from the Membertou First Nation and Membertou Men's Society, a support group for Indigenous men, which also posted information about Jamie in the hope of locating him. 

"We hit the ground running," Sark said. "As soon as we knew something was up, we were in the woods. We were searching the woods solid for three, four months every other day, just going, running off fumes, non-stop." 

Jadis said that during the first few weeks of their search, the group did scan the area where Jamie's body was eventually found, so they were surprised when police shared that location.