Lawrence Sanger was a 20-year-old man when he disappeared on August 29, 1979, in the Lake Athabaska region of northern Saskatchewan. Official missing-person records place his last known location at Fond du Lac, a remote community on the eastern side of Lake Athabaska. That day, Sanger and another man, Thomas Lidguerre, set out from Fond du Lac by boat with the intention of traveling across the lake to Uranium City.
The two men never reached their destination, and neither was subsequently seen or heard from. What began as a routine journey between northern communities became a disappearance that has remained unresolved for decades.
Two days after Sanger and Lidguerre departed, their boat was discovered swamped in the Lake Athabaska area near the Narrows and Popular Point. The discovery immediately raised serious concern for both men, but finding the vessel did not provide investigators with an answer about exactly what had happened to them. A search of the surrounding area was launched and continued for more than a month. Despite the sustained effort, searchers were unable to locate either Sanger or Lidguerre, and no publicly documented evidence has established their movements after they left Fond du Lac. The available official information does not state whether investigators determined that the men encountered an accident on the lake, reached shore somewhere, or experienced some other circumstance. Their disappearance therefore remains centered on the abandoned, swamped boat and the absence of any confirmed trace of either traveler afterward.
Investigative records preserve several identifying details about Sanger that could still be important if information or unidentified remains were ever compared with his case. He was approximately 6 feet 2 inches tall, with black hair and brown eyes, and was described as being of Aboriginal descent. His weight was not recorded in the publicly available case information. He also had a distinctive scar on the top of one of his hands, although the Saskatchewan missing-person record does not specify which hand. No description of the clothing he was wearing when he disappeared has been made available. Sanger was born on August 14, 1959, meaning he had turned 20 only shortly before the journey on Lake Athabaska.
The disappearance is still listed as an active missing-person case by the Saskatchewan Association of Chiefs of Police, with the F Division RCMP Historical Case Unit identified as the investigating agency. Decades have passed without a publicly reported discovery explaining what became of Sanger or Lidguerre, leaving their families and community without a definitive account of the journey's end. The known facts remain strikingly limited but clear: Lawrence Sanger, a 20-year-old man, left Fond du Lac with Thomas Lidguerre on August 29, 1979, intending to travel by boat to Uranium City; their swamped boat was found near the Narrows and Popular Point two days later; an extensive search lasting more than a month failed to find either man; and Lawrence Sanger has remained missing ever since. His case endures as an unresolved disappearance tied to a journey across Lake Athabaska, with the recovered boat representing the last physical link investigators have publicly identified to what happened after the two men set out.Last Seen: Aug 29, 1979
