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Harold Russell is 93 years old and in Russell family circles he’s known as Grandpa. He speaks candidly about his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They keep him young. But he worries about his son, Glenn.

Harold and Glenn were in Florida in early January 2011, miles away from a snow-whipped day in Toronto. They were up early and having coffee when news of what was happening back home began trickling in. A man named Richard Kachkar had stolen a snowplow and gone on a rampage through the city’s streets, careening into parked cars, causing havoc and leading police on a chase that ended with the tragic death of Sgt. Ryan Russell — Glenn’s boy.

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“We watched the whole thing on TV,” Harold Russell recalls. Ryan’s death at 35 sits heavy with Glenn. It is a father’s ache. It never ends. He got past losing Ryan, eventually, but as a parent — as a retired Toronto police officer himself — there is no getting over it. But one recent day this summer wasn’t about the past, so much. It was a “good day, a joyful day,” Glenn said, for him and his wife, Linda, and for Ryan’s widow, Christine, and for Nolan, the little boy who was only two years old when his father was killed in the line of duty.