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HAILEYBURY, Ont. — The corner house on the quiet street looks well cared for. There are yellow flowers in the garden, canoe paddles leaning against the back door, a child’s bicycle in the front yard and a barbecue on the porch. Inside, the sound of happy voices, chattering away, some late-afternoon merriment interrupted by my knock at the screen door.

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A little girl answers, and calls for her father. Peter Greyson appears, stepping from the home’s shadowed interior into the daylight. He is a slight man, 54 years old, soft-spoken and almost painfully polite. He apologizes for not returning my phone calls and speaks to me, amiably, about his life in Haileybury, a sleepy Northern Ontario town on the shores of Lake Temiskaming. He tells me that he is a single father, and that he still paints. But mostly, he says, he has been busy raising his eight-year-old twins.

“I haven’t really been in the headspace to think about the past very much,” Mr. Greyson says, shrugging in the direction of his daughters. “It was a long time ago. People around here know what I did — but no one ever asks me about it.”