The life they had The young Michael Stewart was a handsome, charming boy who aced math tests and won arguments. He had a sharp sense of humour, often cracking jokes that went over the heads of his peers but made their parents laugh. He was small but he had swagger. People liked him and people wanted to be like him.

“He was almost always the smartest person in the room,” recalls his younger brother John.

“His appeal kind of transcended cliques,” says Peter, eldest of the Stewart children. “I mean, we all had our close friends, but he got along with everybody.”

Born on Dec. 14, 1978, Michael was the second son of David and June Stewart, a lawyer and nurse who met while studying in Kingston and settled in Renfrew, a town of about 8,000 an hour’s drive west of Ottawa on the Bonnechere River, near the tiny rural village where David grew up.

Peter came first, in 1976. Michael was followed by the twins, Rebecca and John, who arrived seven weeks premature in May 1980, scaring the heck out of their parents, but growing into healthy babies.

The Stewarts were well liked and respected in their community. David was a partner in a general practice law firm in town. June ran a sexual assault centre at the local hospital. They lived in one of the finest homes in Renfrew — a stately, century-old brick house a few blocks from her husband’s office. It was a social hub for the Stewart children and their friends, with a tree house in the backyard and a pool table in the attic.

David was even in temperament, never too excited or distressed. He deferred to his wife on most household and child-raising decisions. He was never one to discuss matters of the heart, but his children knew he loved them and appreciated his calm, steady presence.

June verged on the eccentric. She would mow the lawn in a sundress and heels. She kept her hair in a pixie cut and changed the colour often. She would often add “Doctor” to her name to snag a table at a packed restaurant. “She could get up to mischief without too much trouble at all,” her husband recalls. She was the life of every party — many of which the Stewarts hosted — and even though David preferred to remain on the sidelines, it was apparent that he got a real kick out of his wife.

“You could see it in his eyes,” recalls family friend Ez Valliquette. “He marvelled at her. He just loved her to death.”

She was a devoted mother, fun-loving and encouraging of playful antics, but she could be stern, too. “You could be terrified of her with just a glance, but also you knew that if there was a problem you could go to her without question and she would support you,” says her daughter Rebecca.

Like his mother, Michael was mischievous. He had a teasing glint in his cool brown eyes. “If he told you, ‘Nice shirt, Mr. Valliquette,’ you’d better go and look in the mirror,” the family friend recalls with a chuckle, “because there might be something wrong with it.”

When Michael was a teenager, he went to a Montreal Expos game with friends, swearing to everyone before he left that he would jump onto the field, catch a football — yes, a football — thrown by a friend and slide into home plate with it. The family tuned in from home and sure enough, there was Michael in the highlight reel, doing exactly that. June phoned the TV station to give producers her son’s name and hometown so they could broadcast it.

“There’s a boy who’s made his mom proud,” her husband recalls the newsman saying when they played the clip.

It remains one of the family’s last happy memories from that time. A year later, the Michael they knew and loved had all but disappeared.