Jamie’s estranged wife Angie High, her children and Jamie’s parents come back from a ski trip in New York State Monday. As soon as she crosses the border, her phone buzzes with stacked up texts and voice messages looking to land: Jamie’s in jail. He was in the hospital and now he’s in jail.

Angie High (Supplied photo)

Angie calls her victim witness counsellor and says her husband shouldn’t be in jail. What can we do? He is ill.

“They said they’d relay everything to the Crown. They didn’t know who the Crown was going to be that day.”

It’s not clear what messages were given to the Crown on Monday Dec. 22 or Tuesday Dec. 23. The court transcripts mention nothing about it.

“We all knew something was wrong,” Angie says. “We all knew that wasn’t the place for him. He told everyone if he went back there he was going to die.”

No one gets to see Jamie on time.

Dylan Eldred gets a call from EMDC about noon on Tuesday Dec. 23, the day he is to visit.

The message strikes him as odd: “Jamie High has declined your visit.”

A half hour later, Dylan gets a call from Jamie’s lawyer. Jamie’s being taken to the hospital in London.

“I think this is great, everything is good, he is going to mental health unit,” Dylan recalls.

Dylan heads to London Health Sciences Centre to see his friend.

He arrives about the same time as Jamie’s family. They’ve driven up from Dunnville, three hours away, after learning their beloved Jamie is in hospital.

By the time everyone arrives, Jamie is already dead. His body has been stored and sealed.

At 2:38 p.m., the seal is broken for the family to view his body.

Jamie High and Julie Ferguson (supplied photo)

Julie doesn’t hear about Jamie’s death until she calls Dylan shortly after 2 p.m. She wants to hear how his visit with Jamie went at the jail. Dylan calls her back an hour later.

He’s dead, Jules, he’s dead, Dylan tells her.

“I hit the floor,” Julie says.

Angie learns that morning her estranged husband is in hospital but she is under court order not to see him, so she calls everyone she can to go instead.

She waits to hear how Jamie is doing.

A few hours later, Angie gets a call from Jamie’s sister, Jessica Jackman, who is at the hospital.

That same moment a police officer knocks on her door.

Chapter 7: ‘Nothing is going to change’

The autopsy of the body of “a muscular and normally developed adult male” begins at 9:15 a.m. Christmas Eve day and continues into Christmas Day 2014.

By the time her postmortem report on the death of Jamie High is filed eight months later on Aug. 10 2015, London Health Sciences Centre staff pathologist Dr. Elena Tugaleva has also consulted police reports, medical records, documents from Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre, photographs, toxicology tests, and witnesses or witness statements. Her 14-page summary is supplemented by 14 pages of medical test results.

Her conclusion seems straightforward to the regional supervising coroner for the West-Region London office, Dr. Rick Mann.

“The cause of death was felt to be sudden death in a man with delirium and left ventricular hypertrophy,” Mann concludes in his investigation statement, based on the post-mortem. (Left ventricular hypertrophy is thickening of the heart wall.)

“This was likely on the basis of withdrawal from Paxil, steroids or a combination thereof. The manner of death is natural.”

To his family and friends, nothing about Jamie’s death is natural.

“We, as a family, feel that the hospital, the jail and the court failed Jamie,” his parents and siblings write in an email, with increasingly expressive punctuation revealing their anger.

“There was a lack of care provided from each facility. Jamie never should have been removed from hospital. He should have been provided with care at the jail and taken to the hospital if he was in the condition we are lead to believe he was in. If he was taken to the court in a wheelchair, why was he taken back to the jail if he was that weak and unresponsive???????? Was he on IV when he was first taken to the hospital? Why was he in a straitjacket if he was so weak he couldn’t walk? HOW DID HE GO FROM THAT TO THAT????”

The regional coroner, Mann, calls Angie High at the end of August 2015 to say there will not be an inquest.

“He said he was satisfied with the information he had and didn’t deem it necessary,” Angie says.

Bound by the ethics of the coroner’s office, Mann politely declines to speak to The London Free Pressabout Jamie High’s case or any decisions his office makes.

When someone dies in custody of natural causes, there is no legal requirement in Ontario to hold an inquest. It is up the regional coroner’s discretion.

When Mann tells her there won’t be an inquest, Angie expresses shock.

The coroner asks Angie to call the rest of the family and see what they think. She calls Jamie’s parents and siblings. A devotion to Jamie overwhelms their devotion to privacy.

“I called the family and they said, ‘Yes, we want to know. There are so many loose ends.’ ”

After she talks to the family, Angie calls the coroner and requests an inquest be called.

Mann says he will consider the request.

In a letter dated Aug 25, 2015, the family’s lawyer, Lisa Gunn writes:

“I believe that there are serious issues with respect to the lack of attention to Mr. High’s medical care and treatment requirements while being held at the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre (EMDC) just prior to his death. Further, this is a situation where Mr. High was removed on by the Police from the Hospital where he was seeking medical and psychiatric treatment on an urgent basis and apparently prior to his discharge by the attending physician at the Hospital.”

Gunn elaborates her many concerns in an interview.

“There were so many opportunities along the way where things might have gone differently and it didn’t. We operate within a system where there are defined roles and parameters and we try to do our best within that system but having said that, there are so many moments in this situation where questions arise as to how we as a community can do better,” Gunn says.

This particular situation engages so many issues that are important.”

On the bail system:

“What happens to individuals with no criminal records who are accused of domestic violence, what bail conditions are appropriate, when is too much too much? The bail system in Ontario in terms of dealing with sureties and variations to terms and remembering that people on bail are innocent until proven guilty.”

On the authority of the court:

“Everybody says they’re concerned as Jamie is appearing in court and yet nothing is happening. Do the words of the justice of the peace mean nothing? Is it even noted in the jail file this man should be getting medical attention? Does any of it matter? Does what we say in court not matter?

I think the public needs to understand how helpless we all are, including the court, when it comes to requiring that things happen in a custodial facility.”

On help for accused:

“Bail and facing allegations in court is not only stressful for the complainants but also for the accused person. What resources are available for dealing with allegations, or what help you might need to support yourself through allegations whether in the end you are acquitted or convicted?”

On help for anyone struggling with mental illness:

“When you need urgent medical help whether for physical symptoms or mental health issues, what resources are immediately available in the community for people and do people always know where to look and when they do, do find what they need?”

On the St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital:

“One, what are the policies and protocols in place for hospital staff and doctors regarding what to do when the police show up with a warrant to arrest a patient, and two, were those policies and procedures followed? Finally, do the procedures that any of those parties have in place ensure that people, like Jamie High, are going to receive appropriate medical care and attention notwithstanding that there may be a warrant outstanding for their arrest?”

On the St. Thomas police:

“What are the policies and procedures when it comes to going to the hospital to arrest a patient who has been admitted for urgent and emergency treatment? Were those procedures followed? This isn’t unfortunately as unique as one might think. Police often track down individuals at the hospital when those individuals are seeking out medical attention. How do we balance the need for the police to discharge their duty by executing the warrant with the needs of the person subject to the warrant to receive the appropriate medical attention?”

On Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre:

“The family is concerned regarding the level of medical care and attention he received when he was admitted to EMDC and perhaps even more so concerned regarding the lack of response to what appeared to be increasingly concerning and disturbing behaviour that he was exhibiting while in custody.”

It’s not clear what factors Mann considers while making a final decision about an inquest. In his official Investigative Statement of August 2015, he does note the family’s concerns.

In April 2016, Mann contacts Lisa Gunn and Angie High to tell them there will be an inquest after all.

“I just want to know what happened. How does a 40-year-old man go into jail on a Saturday night and is dead on Tuesday?” Angie says.

“All we know is that Jamie had been seeing a psychiatrist, he went to the hospital on his own free will saying he needed help, he was admitted to the hospital, for whatever reason he was allowed to be taken from the hospital when they could have just parked someone outside his door and not let him leave.”

In a later interview she wonders if the pain on an inquest will be worth the hope of change in a system that failed her ex-husband.

“Do you know what’s frustrating about all this is that nothing is going to change,” she says. “Why would it?”

If repetition is a sign nothing changes over time, Angie is right to question the impact of yet another inquest into a jail death.

The London Free Press examined 86 inquests into deaths in provincial adult correction centres from 2007 to 2016.

At 61 of those inquests, coroner’s juries made recommendations to prevent similar deaths.

How well are those inquests and recommendations working?

In 2007, coroner’s juries at nine inquests made 17 recommendations to improve mental and physical health care in Ontario jails. The recommendations focused on better screening for mental health, suicide and addiction, better training of staff in mental health, suicide and addiction awareness and prevention, better communication among corrections staff about inmate’s medical conditions and needs, better communication between jails and outside agencies and institutions about an inmate’s medical conditions and needs, and better access to medical treatment.

In 2016, so far, coroner’s juries at five inquests have made 18 recommendations that are the same as or similar to those made 10 years ago.

Time and time again over the past 10 years, coroner’s juries have identified gaps in training, screening and awareness of mental health and addiction issues in correction centres, as well as in monitoring and treatment of patients suffering both mental and physical illnesses.

The total number of those recommendations is 181.

The province of Ontario has no obligation to implement any of them.

“The recommendations unfortunately have very few teeth,” says London lawyer Kevin Egan. “The province can just dismiss them out of hand, and it is answerable to no one.”

That is just one of the problems with the inquest system in the province, says Egan, who has represented two families at custody death inquests the past six years, and is one of the lawyers at McKenzie Lake in London taking on the province over conditions at EMDC in a $325 million class action suit involving inmates and former inmates.

The timing alone of inquests causes problems for families, Egan says.

“One of the principal concerns is that it’s not done on a timely basis. Generally speaking you are several years out from the event before there is any kind of inquest and so the family is left bereft of any information about what happened to their loved one. That is one of the toughest aspects of it.”

Lawyers face their own tough aspects.

“The system itself is tainted,” Egan charges.

The coroner is an employee of the the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services.

The jails in the province are operated by the same Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, he notes.

“I think there is a reasonable apprehension of bias when the coroner is an employee of the same ministry that is running the institution,” Egan says.

Before an inquest, and without input from lawyers who have official standing by representing other parties — such as the family, or police or corrections officers — the coroner and the Crown meet and set the inquest’s scope, he says.

The Crown has a special standing at an inquest, leading the evidence and addressing the jury last when it comes time to suggest recommendations, Egan adds.

Reporters who attend many inquests — I am one — are used to seeing the Crown and other lawyers lock horns over what evidence can be admitted, what questions can be asked and the extent and depth of recommendations the jury is asked to consider.

“The Crown is a employee of the province, and that ministry (of the Attorney General) would respond to any civil claim that might follow the inquest,” Egan says. “I think it tends to erode people’s confidence in the process. It should be a more open opportunity to get to the facts. It’s a frustrating system.”

An inquest offers a family both relief and pain.

“I think that for most people it is cathartic, it helps somewhat. But it would be much more so if the inquest came earlier in time, and if the families felt that the process was fair and not designed to protect people, or the ministry,” Egan says.

“It’s a painful thing to got through and publicly hear for the first time what happened. It’s extremely painful.”

The family and friends of Jamie High will spend the next few weeks bracing for more pain.

The coroner’s inquest is set to begin Nov. 7 in London.

For two years, Angie has sought answers about her husband’s death; at the same time trying to keep her children from hearing too much.

“I want to be a good mom,” Angie says. “I want to protect our kids. I want them to remember their dad in a good light.”

The inquest and accompanying media coverage threaten the balancing act she’s performed.

With 20 witnesses scheduled to testify over five days, the inquest will answer some of her questions.

But those answers may include details about Jamie’s last days that are harsher than those revealed in this series, and suddenly much more public.

In this photo published Dec. 27, 2007 in the St. Thomas Times-Journal, Angie and Jamie High celebrate the birth of their son on Christmas Day in St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital. (Supplied photo)

Chapter 8: Last Words

Well known in life, Jamie High is a secret in death.

His name is not released to the media when he dies.

The London Free Press story the day after he dies offers few details:

“Another inmate has died at London’s provincial jail, but there wasn’t any sign of foul play and the cause of death remains unknown.

Police were called at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday and found an ‘unresponsive male,’ who was pronounced dead at hospital later, London Const. Ken Steeves said.

‘There’s no indication at this time that foul play is suspected. This is now a coroner’s investigation,’ he said. “We’re assisting the coroner.’ ”

Yasir Naqvi, minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services, said the safety and security of jail staff and inmates is a top priority.

“I am saddened to learn of the passing of an inmate at the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre, and my thoughts and condolences are with the family and the loved ones of the deceased,” he said in an email statement.

It takes five hours after Jamie’s death and a flurry of emails within the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services to prepare and release Naqvi’s statement. The superintendent of Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre (EMDC), David Wilson, learns about the death from an emails sent at 11:40 and 11:48 a.m.

To which, Wilson replies: U got to be kidding me.

The emails reveal nothing about the death itself and only a bit about the response of the ministry and the jail itself. The ministry’s own correctional oversight team is assigned to launch an investigation. The response of media to the story is tracked. Questions about the number of cameras in the cells are answered.

At 6:17 p.m, Dec. 23, the end of the busy day, Paul Lipke, the deputy superintendent at EMDC emails three colleagues.

“Once again Gentlemen nice team work by all.”

Within a day and Christmas coming, the death at EMDC is no longer news. The dichotomy that runs through Jamie’s life — a private man and a very public man — continues in his death. His family says a quiet goodbye by themselves, then hold a celebration of his life.

Jamie High, early high school (supplied photo)

At that celebration Sunday Dec. 28 2014, the line stretches out of the Royal Canadian Legion in Dunnville and around the block, family and old high school buddies and girlfriends in a small town where everyone knows everyone, and the many people Jamie has befriended in the years and places since he moved away.

(Read Jamie High’s Obituary here).

The family clamps down on any rumours, so much so that months later, some friends from Dunnville still do not know Jamie died in a jail.

“We made a decision as a family at that time, not knowing what all this was going to lead to, we don’t want to tarnish him in any way because we knew the way he was acting wasn’t the guy that we knew,” Angie High says.

“He’d always been a stand-up guy and very well loved and liked and . . . first and foremost we just didn’t want the kids to hear anything negative about their dad.”

At the memorial service, Jamie’s business partner and friend Scott Jarvis meets Jamie’s parents and he has heard so much about them, it feels like he already knows them. He holds the hand of Jamie’s father for a long, long time.

“It was just terrible, the saddest day,” he says. “To not have answers drives you nuts. It’s just a hole, a hole in my world. ”

There are holes everywhere.

“When this happened I pulled his jersey out of the rotation. I didn’t know what to do with it,” says Steve McVittie, organizer of the Friday Afternoon Classic: Bruins Vs. Flyers hockey league, in which Jamie played.

The Midtown Tavern in St. Thomas, where the players sometime go for beers, hangs Jamie’s number 9 Johnny Bucyk Bruins’ jersey and some photographs of Jamie for the rest of the season. The players wear a black patch with the initials JH for the rest of the season.

At the end of the season party, Steve takes the display down and gives it to Angie.

Friends call this photograph ‘Classic Jamie.’ (supplied photo)

Two weeks after the end-of-the-season party, Steve organizes a tribute night at the bar to raise money for Jamie’s children.

The children don’t really need a fundraiser as much as his friends need to feel they are doing something.

Many months after High’s death, Steve says he thinks every day about his friend and how they have all been cheated.

“He wasn’t my best friend or my only friend but we were close. I have a big hole. Now what?” he says.

“What the hell happened. He had the world by the tail. How does this happen?”

The next hockey season, 2015/2016, the fronts of the players’ jerseys on both teams carry the initials JH.

One of Jamie’s best friends, Dylan Eldred, wears the number 9 Johnny Bucyk jersey.

A few days after Jamie’s death, Dylan takes Angie and Jamie’s sister Jessica Jackman, to the motel and the apartment where Jamie stayed. On the couch of the apartment is a blanket Jamie huddled under.

“I went to the apartment where Jamie briefly stayed because I felt like I would find a piece of him there,” Jessica explains months later in an email. “I was searching for an answer to the most confusing and upsetting question of my life — what happened to my big brother?! The only thing I found in the apartment was the last blanket my brother laid his head on. I will continue to search for answers.”

Shattered, Jessica and the rest of the family take almost a year after Jamie’s death before reluctantly agreeing to meet me. She, her brother Jason, mother Joanne and father David agree to a conversation in October 2015 in the office of St. Thomas lawyer Lisa Gunn.

The conversation is off the record as they struggle for an hour and half trying to decide if they want to say anything on the record at all. Anger, tears, doubt, fear, distrust tinge the negotiations, yet they remain courteous and even warm, at times. In the end, they agree they will consider questions by email. They will answer as one.

“We, as a family, have collectively decided to answer these questions about Jamie,” they write back in an email. “We have always been a close-knit family holding the utmost respect, love and friendship toward each other. We have been each other’s rocks throughout this nightmare and will remain having each others backs while we try to grieve and get through losing our best friend.”

The email comes from his sister Jessica Jackman. She answers a few followup questions, but the family makes it clear there is no point trying for a phone interview, never mind an on-the-record conversation in person.

Dylan will not stop talking about Jamie, not for a year at least. For a year, he will meet whenever asked to talk about Jamie.

“Somebody has to be his voice. He was the best guy you will ever meet. His perfect life became a perfect nightmare,” he says.

He takes me to the motel where Jamie stayed two nights, the apartment where Jamie stayed on the couch the morning before going to the hospital, and the hospital itself where he shows the window to the room where Jamie waited for an assessment.

“I’ve been trying to make sense of it,” he says in an early interview. “It seems it went wrong is so many different ways when the guy just wanted help and needed help. How do we prevent if you or I, if we have a meltdown, and we get sent to jail and end up dead?”

Dylan feels helpless.

“It is weighing me down trying to figure things out,” he says. So he gets shirts made with a silhouette of a body builder and the words Reps for Jamie, and sells them to friends.

On Oct. 7, 2015 Jamie’s birthday, Dylan puts on one of the workout shirts and heads to the gym before work. He does Jamie’s favourite routine, especially the bench press.

“The hospital fell apart, the police fell apart, the jail fell apart, even the justices of the peace fell apart. Anyone of those could have helped him but they didn’t.”

As 2015 turns into 2016, Dylan becomes less willing to meet and talk about Jamie.

Finally, he decides he wants to move on. What else is there to say?

Julie knows people blame her. She broke up the marriage, people will say. She became his surety and pulled it. She was talking to him the night he was taken from hospital and put in a jail cell. His friends won’t talk to her now, Julie says. His family never did.

“Trust the system, everyone said. OK, that is why I pulled the surety, trust the system. He gets put in the hospital and I am so relieved. The hospital is supposed to keep him safe. That is the point of a hospital, especially the psych ward,” Julie says.

“He’s delusional in court, why did no one get him help? He continues to go downhill and they still don’t get him help. He’s in a wheelchair, he’s drooling, he can’t talk. And then nobody gets him help? They just put him back in a cell. How many professionals saw him the last days before he died and did nothing for him? They just neglected him. Everyone did.”

How do you move on?

“I don’t know,” she says in a quiet voice and cries. “I don’t know.”

Julie agrees to be interviewed once at her home in St. Thomas, and once in an office in the newspaper, where she listens to a tape recording of Jamie’s final court appearance.

“I couldn’t tell you how many thoughts I have in my head every day because I can’t figure it out. I’ll never know,” she says.

There are some holes in the story of Jamie High only Julie can fill. As the months pass, she texts now and then, but declines any more requests for interviews.

Angie High meets for the first few times in the presence of lawyer Lisa Gunn and the initial long conversations are all off the record.

She goes back to work a few months after his death.

“I’m a sales rep, so I have to do this,” she says, showing a smile, “every day. You just take the day as it comes.”

As the year passes, she makes do. She learns to drive the boat Jamie bought the family. She makes sure the regular family scramble of school, sports, vacations, visits to Dunnville continues.

Over time, she agrees to meet and talk now and then on neutral ground, a south-end London restaurant.

She speaks in a warm timbre, and often as she talks about Jamie, the outgoing girl who was prom queen and joined just about every club in high school comes to the surface. She is open about the love they shared, the struggles they endured.

But around the subject of her children, Angie erects a wall. She never offers to meet in the family home. She is adamant her children’s names and photographs not appear in print. Out of respect for her wishes, The London Free Press does not take a photograph of the home where she and the children live. She refuses to appear on a video or allow audio recordings of her interviews to be broadcast online. She worries about what she reveals.

She worries what Jamie might think about all this attention.

“Jamie always liked to hold his cards close to his chest,” she says.

Perhaps, then, he would have appreciated the difficulties in bringing this story to light.

It takes weeks after his death for his name to leak out.

It takes one month to arrange the initial interviews with his wife and his friends and his girlfriend.

It takes nine months to persuade his family to meet and weeks after to get the emailed set of comments and answers.

It takes even more time to obtain his health records and autopsy report, and for lawyer Lisa Gunn to obtain his jail records.

It takes more than a year for a Freedom of Information request to be processed and most of the details about Jamie’s stay in jail are blanked out.

This story has taken so long it has taken on uneasy status in my newsroom.

Each day an electronic version of every reporters’ assignments is emailed out. Off and on, for two years, the assignment “jail guy” appears on my schedule.

It’s appeared and disappeared and re-appeared so often, other reporters have long given up teasing or asking me about it.

Jamie’s name does not appear on the assignment. It does not seem right until his story is ready to be told.

The words “jail guy” has appeared on the schedule so often, and this story has taken so long to write I’m no longer sure it is worth writing anymore.

And now, there is going to be an inquest, starting Nov. 7.

It’s a bit unusual for a news organization to publish a series only days before an inquest examines the same or some of the same issues.

The five-day inquest is expected to hear from 20 witness. People who refused to speak or felt they could not speak to a reporter about Jamie’s case will have to explain their role in his death at the inquest.

But an inquest is limited in scope. It will likely not tell the entire story either.

This series has raised a range of questions about Ontario’s justice, corrections and mental health care system that are beyond what any one inquest can answer. The series has given The London Free Press a map of problems in Ontario to follow for years, including:

A bail system that puts people under the strictest rules first, and under conditions that will set them up to fail.

A mentality among police forces, in part directed by the province, to hold men accused of domestic violence in jail and thereby in the bail system, regardless of the nature of the charges.

A lack of help for accused men seeking help to change their behaviour.

A lack of help for anyone seeking help for mental illness.

A lack of provincial standards and training guiding police when dealing with mentally ill suspects, especially in hospital care.

A lack of provincial standards and training for hospitals when treating a suspect wanted by police.

The ongoing and persistent failure of correctional facilities to help people with addictions and mental illness.

The persistent failure of the province to recognize correctional facilities cannot ever fully help those with mental illness, especially when segregation is used for treatment.

The inability of the courts to direct correctional centres to help, and truly rehabilitate inmates.

The reliance on personalities of those involved, not policies, for courts to direct what happens to mentally or physically fragile accused.

The concerns about the independence and effectiveness of coroner’s inquests, the recommendations from which the provincial government need not follow.

Here is what I wrote in an email to Jamie’s mother, father, sister and brother a full year ago when I tried to explain why I wanted to interview them.

“Jamie High was a deeply loved, very successful and much admired father, husband, brother and son with a strong network of loving family and friends.

He took a step off his path and had some struggles.

Instead of getting the proper help for those struggles, he ended up in court, jail, hospital and jail again.

Somehow this man, so loved, so strong, so successful, died alone in a jail cell.

How in the world did this happen? How can we stop it from happening to someone else? Because if a Jamie High can get caught in the system and die like this, so can anyone.

His death raises serious questions and concerns about how he, and others, are treated by the institutions and agencies that are supposed to help.

His death left a hole in the lives of many people, who want answers.”

Then I added:

“You might wonder why I am doing this story, and given some of the challenges, I have wondered that myself.

It would have been easier to let it go and do nothing.

But there is something about your son and brother, and the love he collected, that has driven me. I can’t really explain it, but there it is. Perhaps you all understand that more than anyone.”

The reason The Free Press and I have been driven to tell Jamie’s story, and stick with it, is because he never should have had a story like this.

He never should have been “jail guy.”

He should have had the chance to become, at least, some guy who had some trouble once and got some help and moved on.

He should have had the chance to become again some guy you played hockey with, or saw in a gym, or met in a bar watching football and liked because of his cockiness or didn’t like because of his cockiness, maybe a good friend, or a business partner, maybe your brother, or son, or husband, or ex-husband, boyfriend or ex-boyfriend, or father.

Jamie’s last days should not have been spent naked and alone on the floor of a jail cell.

His last words should not have been incoherent mutterings.

He never should have had a story written about him called Indiscernible.

No one should.

HIGH FAMILY STATEMENT

We, as a family, have collectively decided to answer these questions about Jamie. We have always been a close-knit family holding the utmost respect, love and friendship toward each other. We have been each other’s rocks throughout this nightmare and will remain having each others backs while we try to grieve and get through losing our best friend. We remember everything great about Jamie: He had the ability to light up any room he entered whether it was full of friends and family, colleagues or complete strangers. He had the unique ability to capture everyone with a simple glance, smile or joke. People were naturally drawn to him and were quickly addicted to his warmth, his sense of humour, his fun and energetic personality. We, as a family, were in love with him. We all looked up to him and shared many sacred secrets and memories with him. We loved everything about him. He was the funniest guy you could ever meet. His ability to protect us, especially his children, was remarkable. He was the best big brother in the world. As a child, he tucked me in at night and told me bedtimes stories, even if he had a handful of friends waiting to hang out with him. He spent every Sunday watching football with Jay and their boys and communicating long distance with Steve over their latest fantasy football players. As a child he loved playing hockey and baseball. He used to bring home as many kids from his hockey team as he possibly could. They would spend the entire weekend playing pond hockey outdoors or ball hockey in the basement. We had so many incredible memories together. He loved paintball so much he designed a paintball course in mom and dad’s backyard and gathered people from the community to play each week. We were together, all of us, not only on holidays but on every weekend we possibly could. We didn’t take time or our relationships for granted. We would propose toasts to tell each other how much we loved each other every single time we were together. We always showed gratitude to our family who we considered more as friends. All we did was laugh. We had so much fun together as a family. Every year Jamie, Jason and I would sleep together on Christmas eve, anxiously awaiting Santa’s arrival. I think Angie felt weird the first Christmas we invited her to sleep with the three of us on Christmas Eve but she quickly settled into the tradition, just like she quickly settled into being our sister and daughter. Our yearly annual cottage trips were always adventurous and entertaining and always brought us together, regardless of where we were living in the world. Our weekend kitchen dance parties where always packed full of karaoke singing, dancing and lots of fun. We travelled extensively as a family- trips to BC and Mexico were annual, Nicaragua, Galapagos islands, Ecuador, Bahamas, Jamaica, Buffalo football games as well as countless travelling throughout North America. What did everyone love most about Jamie: Jamie had a huge heart. He was often described as the man who was so compassionate he sometimes cared more about others than he did about himself. He was always worried about everyone and treated others with respect. He was fun, kind, witty, hilarious, energetic and the master of one-liners. He always came equipped with the best hugs in the world and was one hell of a cook.

Originally published by The London Free Press at lfpress.com/investigations