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The sole casualty, Leon Shirdan, was named. He was described as a mechanic. That title was the glimmer of hope my mother was holding on to. She knew he was not a mechanic, so she knew with hopeful certainty that this casualty could not have been him. My grandmother, with inner strength paradoxical to her frail physique, rushed my mother to get dressed. She knew people would be at their doorstep at any minute.

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So when the Canadian government announced on Monday it had finally deported one of the terrorists who staged the attack, Mahmoud Mohammad Issa Mohammad, nobody was happier than Mr. Shirdan.

“Today has just become a very, very special day for my family,” he wrote on Facebook. “Way late, but late better than never, Canada today announced the deportation [of] this revolting excuse for a human being. …

“Happy day.”

It hadn’t been easy for Mr. Shirdan, 26, a Toronto visual artist and writer, knowing the terrorist who murdered his grandfather was living “freely and happily” at home with his wife in nearby Brantford, Ont.

“It was uncomfortable,” he said Tuesday.

The Shirdans, who emigrated from Israel in the 1990s, had only been in Canada a year when they learned Mohammed was just an hour’s drive away. It made them feel insecure. And the awkwardness was compounded as the government’s attempts to deport him dragged on, year after year.

Mohammad may have never known that those he hurt for his cause were so near. Because the Shirdans suffered quietly, he was probably unaware that the government fighting his attempts to make Canada his refuge had welcomed the family of his victim.