Family members of two victims testify at B.C. ferry sinking trial

VANCOUVER – Relatives of two people left missing after a B-C Ferry sinking seven years ago are testifying today at a the trial of the ship’s navigation officer.

Gerald Foisy and Shirley Rosette haven’t been seen since March 2006, the night the Queen of the North struck an island and sank off the B.C. north coast.

Brittni Foisy, Gerald’s 22-year-old daughter, told Karl Lilgert’s criminal negligence trial that she had a strong relationship with her father, who she would speak to on the phone several times a week.

Foisy’s parents separated when she was younger, with her father staying in 108 Mile House, B.C., while she, her sister and her mother moved to Penticton.

Foisy, who last saw Gerald a week before the fatal sinking, describes her father as warm, saying he often told her and her sister that they were his world.

Gerald Foisy’s children have never before spoken publicly about their father or the disaster that left him missing.