Tireless diplomats. Brave aid workers. Journalists, both staff and freelance. Travellers, some worldly, some not so much.

Risk-taking Canadians, by choice, by assignment, or by terrible miscalculation.

There is no one profile of those who are kidnapped — no commonality of their circumstances except that they all were abducted in regions where hostage-takings are possible, even if only remotely so.

Some had kidnap insurance, training and meticulous security measures. Others had nothing but the packs on their backs.

It remains a rare thing, the horror of overseas abduction. But not as rare as it used to be. Nor is it likely to remain so rare in the risk-fraught years ahead.

Rarity has helped keep kidnappings off the policy radar and rarity is meaningless when it happens to someone you love.

Not all hostages are created equal.

And that’s a problem.

Sailing had long been John Ridsdel’s passion, following in the steps of his British father, who perfected his skills in the daunting, traffic-jammed English Channel. “He used to love to tell the story of how his dad on a whim went out and bought a sailboat when my dad was in his early 20s,” said Ridsdel’s daughter in an interview. “And so my dad said ‘Ah, huh, I better learn how to sail.’ So he did. He went and took a sailing course for a week and showed up and said, ‘All right, let’s do this.’ ”

Robert Hall’s family used to tease him about being “too much” of a romantic, in love with being in love. He was never boring, that’s certain. “Robert is the most interesting man in the world!” was the family joke, his sister Bonice Thomas says.

“From earning money to put food on the table as a welder, to learning to fly a plane, learning to drive a race car or to sail the Pacific alone, he would just take on these huge things. And he would really do his homework, find mentorship, read everything he needed to get there — and then just do it,” she said.

Right up until the end, when it seemed all but certain Hall would be killed by his kidnappers, he refused his Filipina fiancée’s pleadings that he try to escape, saying he would not leave her behind. He was killed. She was later spared.

In the hierarchy of Canadians hostages, Ridsdel and Hall were near the top. Two men, enjoying their retirement in the Philippines, strangers until they were taken together by the Abu Sayyaf Group on a night in September 2015. Wrong place, wrong time. Everyone can have sympathy for that terrible luck.

The kidnappers stormed the marina looking for any lucrative prisoners. Had Hall not had trouble sleeping and turned on the light to make popcorn, maybe he would have been spared. Had Ridsdel not valiantly tried to save fellow sailors, perhaps he would be alive today.

“That is so like John — while everyone else was hiding in their boats when they heard the commotion, he went to see if he could help,” says Sherry McCampbell, who was at the marina on her boat at the time of the abduction.

“That sounds like something my dad would do,” says Ridsdel’s daughter when she hears the story. She asked that her name not be published due to privacy concerns.

These stories are only told in full now, in the wake of their deaths. That is partly by design as the government’s advice to Canadian families in the grip of a hostage crisis is always “Don’t talk about it.”

But sometimes the strategy of silence feeds an indifference in a public that never learns much about the hostages or their terrified families until it’s too late. It also relieves pressure on politicians to act. There are no hashtag campaigns for release. No marches on Parliament Hill, no obligation for Ottawa to learn how allies are progressing toward a 21st-century response to a distinctly 21st-century problem.

Bob Rae has seen this play out both as a member of parliament and as Ridsdel’s friend. He says families suffer the most from the indifference. “The fundamental thing is that you’ve got to put the families first and you’ve got to put everything else second. You really do,” said Rae.

“To me, it’s not about how somebody gets into trouble. The fundamental legal and moral obligation is, ‘Well, they’re Canadians and therefore we have an obligation to them.’ ”

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For four years, the Boyle family has been forced to imagine what life is like for Joshua Boyle, his American wife, Caitlan Coleman, and their two baby boys, both delivered in captivity. They are still held by the Taliban-linked Haqqani Network.

The family has also had to deal with the public’s he-got-what-he-deserved dismissals. Boyle, 33, and Coleman, 31, have been pilloried as foolish backpackers. But is death the price to pay for naivety?

Amanda Lindhout was dismissed as a naive freelance journalist who irresponsibly travelled to Somalia. Her mom, Lorinda Stewart, said she tried to surround herself with only positive people during Amanda’s 460 days of hell as she raised the $600,000 needed to free her daughter. “I couldn’t avoid the comments at times,” she says. “I even had two family members in particular who just outright said, ‘It’s her own damn fault and why should we pay money for her mistake?’ It was a rough ride.”

But when Lindhout revealed the details of what she endured in captivity in her book A House in theSky, public opinion shifted. Lindhout, whose story is being made into a Hollywood film, now brings audiences to tears during speeches that talk of forgiveness and perseverance.

Jim Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden, members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, did generate sympathy when they were held for 118 days in Iraq, but once released, the attacks began. Why were they in Iraq? Why were taxpayers’ dollars wasted on securing their release when they willingly wandered into danger? They were lambasted for later continuing with their messages of peace when men of war had saved them.

Colin Rutherford, who travelled to Afghanistan to study history, was freed in January after five years of brutal Taliban custody. “Score for Colin, he goes to a lawless war zone to sightsee and five years later gets to come back to Canada fluent in Pashto and Dari,” said one online commentator on a news story about Rutherford’s suffering. “What is your next ‘go to’ place to visit Colin? Raqqa, Syria?”

Perhaps the most tragic case was the bizarre tale of Beverley Giesbrecht. Hers is not a name many Canadians know. “I’ve been held now for three months, and my embassy has not done anything for me,” she says, her voice breaking in a video her captors forced her to make. “I have guns to my head. I could be killed at any moment.”

She died, sick and broken, after being held for two years in the Taliban-controlled region of Pakistan. Her kidnappers were demanding only $1,200 ransom by the end — little more than a week’s salary for the average Canadian, yet enough to save a life. “Bev was an aggressive magazine publisher who was both charismatic and fearless,” longtime friend Glen Cooper told the Star. “I will never stop missing her.”

Giesbrecht was also an outlier with a tragic past, bouts of substance abuse, and, after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, she lost herself in a cloud of conspiracy theories. She started a website called Jihad Unspun and converted to Islam, adopting the name Khadija Abdul Qahaar. Against all advice, she left Vancouver to make a film in Pakistan, where she was set up and kidnapped.

“I was not told about the low ransom,” says Cooper, who was the Canadian government’s point of contact for the case. “I would have paid it on the spot.”

Much of Giesbrecht’s kidnapping and presumed death in 2010 — her body was never found — remains a mystery. But her friends believe that despite an RCMP investigation called Project Spiel, her background did matter, as there was little pressure on a government already reluctant to waste political capital on a Canadian considered a jihadi sympathizer.

Documents obtained first by CBC under Access to Information legislation show that while the government was publicly proclaiming the case into her death remained open in 2011, foreign affairs officials had told the RCMP to stop investigating.

“It’s like this bizarre phenomenon at least in the U.S. and Canada, where our citizens do not give a s--- about our citizens,” says a security consultant who has worked to free hostages and was interviewed by the Star but asked for anonymity.

“The analogy I give is when people go swimming we have lifeguards and lifeguards are generally saving the dumbasses that get in over their head and they can’t swim too well. It’s rarely a riptide. But we have lifeguards and to me that’s how we have to view this hostage business.”