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It was 11:11 a.m. on Remembrance Day when Paul Boldizar got a call telling him his youngest son was dead.

He was still on the phone when two police officers knocked on the front door of the Boldizars’ Ottawa home. When Paul and wife Darina finally answered, the tears in their eyes told police they already knew the message Foreign Affairs had sent them to deliver.

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Neighbours had found Oliver Boldizar’s badly decomposed body in his rented room in Santiniketan, India, where he had been studying, according to a Times of India story on his death, the anthropology of Tibet, psychological anthropology and “hallucinogens.” Oliver would have turned 38 the next day. A child’s “Happy Birthday” sign hung outside his door.

It was a sad end to an extraordinary 20-year journey. Or perhaps, as Oliver himself so firmly believed, it is only the beginning.

“Oliver wanted to be — wherever he wasn’t right now,” said Paul, who travelled to West Bengal to meet with police and bring Oliver’s ashes home.