Toronto

Police release age-enhanced image of girl who vanished in Etobicoke 34 years ago

Exactly 34 years after she disappeared, Toronto police are once again asking the public for information about a girl who vanished after leaving her Etobicoke apartment.

Nicole Morin was 8 when she disappeared after leaving her Etobicoke apartment

Nicole Morin at age 8, left. On the right is an age-enhanced image of Morin released by Toronto police. (Toronto Police Service)

Exactly 34 years after she disappeared, Toronto police are once again asking the public for information about what happened to Nicole Morin.

She was eight years old when she left her apartment on The West Mall in Etobicoke in the late morning of July 30, 1985. She was never seen again. 

In the last five years, police have made several new efforts to determine what became of Morin. 

In 2014, police re-enacted her disappearance. That same year, Toronto and provincial police launched a search in Springwater Township, north of Toronto. 

The officers were following up on a tip provided to the OPP around the time of Morin's disappearance, but nothing was found. 

A 2014 search in Springwater Township for any sign of what happened to Morin was unsuccessful. (Sue Sgambati/CBC)

When the CBC spoke with her father, Art Morin, in 2015, he said he still held out hope that Nicole might one day come home. 

That same year, her friend, Melissa Elaschuk, spoke with As It Happens about the ways in which Nicole's disappearance have weighed on her over the years. 

"It changed our way of life," Elaschuk said. "The trust we once had, and perhaps the complacency that had built up from being in a great neighbourhood and a great building — that all vanished with her disappearance." 

Police have created an age-enhanced image of what Morin might look like now, in her early 40s. 

It was released by the service's year-old missing persons unit, created in the wake of the Bruce McArthur investigation. 

The unit has been putting out regular calls for missing persons cases stretching back to the 1970s, often with updated sketches, in hopes of finding new information.