Nova Scotia RCMP are deploying dogs that are specially trained to detect human remains in “areas of highest probability” in the search for Lilly and Jack Sullivan, children who mysteriously disappeared months ago from their home in the wooded community of Lansdowne, N.S.

Staff Sergeant Stephen Pike from the Police Dog Service Training Centre in Innisfail, Alta., told reporters Friday that using cadaver dogs in an investigation means there is reason to believe human remains are present.

The Nova Scotia RCMP have laid dozens of sexual-abuse charges against a former swim instructor who worked at a provincially run youth detention centre for nearly three decades.

Donald Williams, 75, was arrested at his home last week in Dartmouth and faces 66 charges of sexual assault, sexual assault causing bodily harm, sexual exploitation, sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching and assault. The charges relate to 30 victims − all boys but one.

Newfoundland and Labrador Liberal Leader John Hogan triggered an election for Oct. 14 on Monday, the last day possible to make the call under the province’s fixed date election rules.

Mr. Hogan visited Government House along with his wife, Gillian, and their dog, Rooney, to ask Lieutenant-Governor Joan Marie Aylward to dissolve the House of Assembly.

On a drizzly November afternoon last year, Judy Moss burst from her house in Torbay, N.L., sprinted to her red barn and dumped the water she’d drawn for her miniature ponies. Then she hurried up Kelly’s Lane and started knocking on doors.

“Don’t drink the water,” she warned her neighbours.

Police investigating the disappearance of Jack and Lilly Sullivan collected the kids’ toothbrushes from their home, found a sock and children’s boot prints in the woods, according to court documents that also detail the results of their mother and stepfather’s polygraph tests.

Thirteen court documents filed by police in their continuing major crime investigation, and obtained by The Globe and Mail on Thursday, divulge the items seized during the search for the young kids from Lansdowne, N.S.; a lack of evidence pointing to potential criminality at the time the documents; and a play-by-play account of the children’s last hours before their mother reported them missing.