Striking vistas on a hot day contrast grim search
Isn’t it great to wake up in the morning and find you’re still alive?
ELDERLY MAN
I’m lost — inexplicably lost. I must have missed my turn a few clicks back, a turn I should know by heart after several days of travelling these stretches of highway and dusty back roads.
This is the theme of my Wednesday even before lunchtime, in a week that has only become more confounding and bizarre as one long day stretches into another.
For Rod O’Brien, it surely must be bizarre as well. But it’s so much more than that, as he and his family enter day 10 of a nightmare beyond belief. His little boy, five-year-old Nathan, is still missing, as are his in-laws, Kathryn and Alvin Liknes, a couple I have heard many good things about from extended family, friends and colleagues over these past few trying days.
While this horrid case drags on — sometimes just endless hours of waiting, others bursting with unusual, alarm-raising activity as police search the Airdrie acreage where Douglas Garland lives with his parents — it seems that the bizarre will be a constant companion.
The day starts with a court appearance by Garland, a person of interest in the case whom police say is not considered a suspect at this point.
After battling through Stampede traffic to get to the office, only to battle even worse traffic jams to get back downtown for court, I sit with my media colleagues in a room filled with lawyers dressed in western wear and a curious assortment of accused, from a woman with several aliases to a young man wearing a T-shirt sporting an inappropriate slogan for his appointment with the judge.
This also being Kids’ Day at the Calgary Stampede, it is all the more poignant that Rod O’Brien chooses to be here on a day he’d probably be with his boys down on the midway, smiling as he watches them delight in the Superdogs and eat cotton candy.
I don’t get the chance to personally encounter the loyal and loving father, though, as I’m called away from court before his and Garland’s appearance. There’s a big development on the acreage on day five of the search there, it seems, thanks to reports of ambulances, emergency trucks and men in Hazmat suits.
This is when I get lost on a road that I’ve driven countless times over the past few days. My left eyelid now boasting an uncontrollable twitch, I go way too far after the turn, distracted by yet another convoy of Calgary police vehicles. Turning north, I know I’ll eventually meet up with Township Road 274, which I hit on my way back before Highway 2 and its beehive of 18-wheelers comes into view.
As I pass bright yellow fields of canola, verdant pastures and charming farmhouses before arriving back at the acreage and wall of local and national media, a spectacular vista of the Calgary skyline set against the jagged Rockies comes into view.
Its beauty, one that is striking no matter how often I see it, serves as just another reminder of the grim task that police have as part of their jobs — and that we as journalists witness as part of our jobs. We’d all rather be somewhere else, we’d all rather this horrible case was just something from a summer blockbuster film or mystery novel one would take to the lake.
The emergency vehicles, we are eventually told, are precautionary measures for police; the Hazmat suits, police also tell us, are another precaution when working around hazardous farm chemicals.
While we’re somewhat skeptical, the hot sun beating down all around — the 30 C temperature is coming close to the 1905 33 C record — is testament to the rigours of such a painstaking, thankless task.
As I write this from a restaurant five minutes down the road from the search area, an elderly man walks up. “Isn’t it great to wake up in the morning and find you’re still alive?” he asks me as I type away. I look up and let out a reflexive laugh. “Yes, laugh and enjoy, don’t ever take it for granted. Have a lovely day.”
For a moment, I feel like I conjured up this refreshing interlude of humanity, the funny old man who delivers his message with a smile and a wink.
But he’s real. And so is this nightmare, for a family that hopes to find its lost little boy and his grandparents, who on this day police also look for in a Calgary landfill.
The Amber Alert for Nathan O’Brien and his grandparents, Kathryn and Alvin Liknes, continues.