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She said that the mental-health team ultimately decided to try to locate Berry but only after they’d also spoken to Cotton. When the team was not able to locate them, the sister went to Berry’s apartment on Beach Drive and found him in good spirits.

She said she and her brother had a long chat about his decision to leave B.C. Ferries and he told her that he’d been “very unhappy” with his job for quite some time and he just couldn’t take it anymore and that was why he was leaving. Her brother spoke of another job possibility and also that he was going to cash in a portion of his pension to cover his costs while he waited to get the new job.

Photo by Darren Stone / Victoria Times Colonist

Asked by Crown counsel Patrick Weir as to any advice she gave, she said she felt the move to cash in part of the pension was not a good idea and that the money was for his retirement and it should stay there.

“Did you talk to him about any other stressors that may have been going on in his life,” said Weir.

“Yeah, we talked a lot. I think that probably this would be the first time where I ever really directly told my brother that I thought that he was depressed,” she said.

She said she told Berry that it wasn’t surprising that he would be depressed because of everything that had happened and that he had had “so many stressors” to that point.

“I really felt he needed to get help for this, but he wouldn’t have any of it. I asked him to get a family doctor. He said no … He was just so opposed to talking to anybody about his mental health. To him, he felt that he was perfectly fine.”