CALGARY — Family and friends gathered today to mourn an elderly Calgary couple who got lost in the bush and died of exposure.
The bodies of Allen and Margaret Berrington — both in their 90s — were found last week just metres apart on a road not far from where their car appeared to have run out of gas.
RCMP say the couple’s car was found by two dirt bike riders near Water Valley, about 100 kilometres northwest of Calgary.
The two, who had been reported missing two days earlier by their family, apparently tried to walk out of the bush.
How the couple ended up where they did remains a mystery.
They were last seen by family at a get-together at their southwest Calgary home for Margaret Berrington’s 91st birthday.
When family members went to check on the couple a few days later, food was still sitting out uncovered and the dishes were undone.
They initially suspected the couple, prone to routine, had gone to a casino for a birthday buffet dinner.
But a helicopter search of the area turned up nothing and the pair did not appear on casino security video.
James Graham, the couple’s grandson, has said the family is finding some comfort in the fact that the two died as they lived — together.
The Berringtons met in 1939 at a technical college now known as the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. They had three children, seven grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren.