Twenty-one months later, the search moves into the invisible.

There is a particular kind of waiting that belongs to families of the missing. It is not the waiting of a delayed train or a late arrival. It is a waiting without a timetable, measured in months and seasons, in the slow accumulation of anniversaries that no one wanted to mark. For the family of Liam Toman, twenty-one months have passed since the twenty-two-year-old disappeared from the ski resort of Mont-Tremblant in Quebec. The snow has melted and returned. The search has continued. And now, his parents are turning to a different kind of evidence: the quiet, invisible trail left by a phone that fell silent at 3:15 a.m. .

Liam Toman vanished on February 2, 2025, after leaving a bar in the ski village north of Montreal. He had been on a ski trip with friends, a night of dinner and drinks that ended with a security camera capturing him walking back toward his hotel. He never arrived. A final call and text were sent from his phone around 3:15 a.m. Since then, there has been no activity on his bank account, his social media, or his phone. His wallet was found seven weeks later in a nearby parking lot .

The new effort involves metadata linked to that phone. Chris Toman, Liam's father, said the family has been working with a digital forensic expert alongside the Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police. Cell tower pings, router data, and other signal metrics could help narrow the search area—the sprawling mountain resort and the terrain beyond it. Some production orders have been requested through the police to retain data from third-party apps. "Those are kernels, or data packs," Chris said, "that allow us to narrow that search area a little tighter" .

What makes the digital search both promising and painful is the uncertainty it addresses. The family knows certain things with precision. They know Liam was seen on camera walking with purpose, not stumbling, not lost. They know he was wearing a black and dark green Volcom snow jacket, a green sweater, a plaid shirt, black snow pants, and a black-and-white Levelwear beanie. They know it was nearly minus 30 degrees Celsius. What they do not know is where he went after that brief encounter, or what happened in the hours that followed .

This weekend, the digital effort coincides with another ground search. Volunteer teams and trained search-and-rescue dog units, including the group SARCAN K9, are combing forested areas. It is not the first search and will not be the last. The family has made eighteen or nineteen visits to the resort since February 2025. A $50,000 reward remains in place for information leading to Liam's location. Blue wristbands have been distributed, a campaign called Circle of Strength, meant to keep attention on the case as the seasons turn and the news cycle moves on .

The resort itself has changed in the time since Liam disappeared. New lighting has been installed. Cameras have been upgraded, more of them now recording footage rather than offering only livestreams. A security audit is ongoing. Lara Toman, Liam's stepmother, said the upgrades offer a small measure of solace. "Now if this happened, he would be on camera," she said. Chris Toman put it more plainly: "If anything positive comes out of this, it's that we don't want another family to go through this" .

There is no resolution in this story, not yet. There is only the work: the metadata, the searches, the wristbands, the reward, the slow accumulation of efforts that might, one day, yield an answer. The family describes Liam as kind, quick-witted, risk-averse—an old, sensitive soul who loved the outdoors and made friends easily. He graduated from Niagara College with an electronics technician diploma in 2024. He was twenty-two years old when he walked out of a bar and into a night that has never ended. His family is still looking. They will keep looking.

Image Disclaimer: This article's image was produced using AI generation tools and does not represent the actual individuals or location involved.

Sources: CTV News, CBC News, The Canadian Press