David Milgaard, who was wrongfully convicted of murder, finds peace at his home in Cochrane, Altai, May 22, 2019. The Globe and Mail
Last week I was sitting in a crowded little bar in Moose Jaw. It was late Friday night, an almost too stereotypical scene on the Canadian prairie. Glasses of beer gleamed amber on the tables around us, hockey players slid in endless circles on the TVs above. A boisterous team of country boys filled the room with their laughter and noise. Outside, Saskatchewan’s sky rose dark and vast.
I was with my family, feeling happy and joyful two years apart when I caught the sad voice of the late Gord Downey in the bustle of the bar. Twenty years for nothing, this is nothing new, he sang. Besides, no one cares about something you didn’t do. A Canadian Icon Singing for a Canadian Tragedy: The Misdemeanor Sentence of David Milgaard. For a moment, our conversation became gloomy, as the stories always seem when David’s story comes out.
“It’s horrible what happened to him,” my aunt said, shaking her head.
I’ve been in frequent contact with David over the last few years, and he texted me the night before. Two days later, during the same trip, I would receive the shocking news that he had fallen ill suddenly and severely. He died on Sunday, May 15, at the age of 69.
Word of his death spread throughout the country, deeply upsetting those who knew him personally, as well as many who did not. David was arrested, charged and wrongfully convicted of the 1969 murder of Saskatchewan nurse Gail Miller, and the struggle for his release, acquittal and compensation – and a possible investigation into his case – lasted four decades. David’s story had been so long and so distant that many Canadians – and perhaps especially those of us on the prairies – felt that he was always there and that his life’s struggle was taking place against the backdrop of our own lives. such as wheat kings, the song of his life playing in the hustle and bustle of a crowded bar.
I had an extra connection. My parents bought my early childhood home from David’s parents when they moved closer to Stony Mountain Prison after his sentence. Over the years, I thought about this fleeting overlap between our two families, the memories and moments stored in the walls of a small white bungalow.
There are other wrongfully convicted people in Canada, but David is perhaps the most famous. Courtesy of David Milgaard
I met David after I was asked to host an event with him at the Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg in the spring of 2019. The 50th anniversary of his arrest was approaching, and after the event I asked David if he would allow me to write his profile. I thought it would be an interesting time to think about his life and show people how he was doing.
I saw first hand the profound effect David and his story still had. I felt it myself and saw it clearly in others. From the stage, I watched the audience shed tears as he spoke. Then a crowd of people gathered to thank him, to tell him how much he and his mother had inspired them, how they had always believed in his innocence. Among them was Brian Anderson and his family, who are working to overturn Mr Anderson’s 1973 murder sentence.
David told me he would have to consider whether he wanted to do an interview. He didn’t particularly like the attention, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to expose himself there again. A few days after the panel, he called and said I could come to his home outside of Calgary.
I stopped at David’s town house in Cochrane on a cloudy spring morning. It was exactly three years ago. May 21, 2019
David was waiting for me at the front window. I had seen his face so much in the news that I knew him deeply, as if I knew him before he even opened the door.
His place was simple and modest. By then, he had separated from his wife, Christina, and there was plenty of room for him and his children, Robert and Julia, then 13 and 11. He had long since lost all the money he received as compensation, some spent on himself and his travels, but most distributed, poorly invested, or bribed by people who took advantage of him.
I could see how easily this happened. For someone who has survived so much, there remains an obvious vulnerability to David. He was a boy when he was arrested and snatched from the ordinary world, a man when he returned to it. He had lost so much. Release from prison was an experience he often likened to the release of the moon.
There are other wrongfully convicted people in Canada, but David is perhaps the most famous. This is largely due to his mother Joyce, who made them so public, telling her son’s story to every journalist, every politician, every Canadian so stubbornly that no one could look away, even if they wanted to.
But there was something about David himself that had a deep connection to people. Sometimes I wondered if the sheer magnitude of injustice touched people so deeply, the very idea of an innocent man spending 23 years in prison for such a heinous murder. Or maybe it came from a sense of collective guilt because so many people have seen him innocent long before he was proven with DNA.
Or maybe because, although he left Stony Mountain 30 years ago, it was clear that David Milgaard would never be truly free.
His first years outside prison were difficult, and the country watched him stumble. But even later, after he gave up drinking and found some stability, there was a palpable grief.
I remember all the notes around his house, reminders of the things he was trying to do, the way he was trying to be. A challenge page sat on the kitchen table. Third on the list was “taking care of yourself.”
I spent two days with David. We talked, delivered lunches to his children at school, walked on the rails near his house. Agreeing to talk to me was an act of trust and courage. David’s life and case have been documented in detail over the last 50 years, sometimes well, other times bad and inaccurate.
When the story came out, David called to say how moved he was that people were still interested.
After that interview, David and I talked and texted regularly. When Joyce died in March 2020, I wrote her obituary for The Globe. Sometimes David would send me humorous videos or music to listen to: Tim McGraw Modest and kind and a version of Bob Dylan I will be released. He often sent me his pictures. In one, he was riding a horse in the snow, with mountains in the background and dark clouds sweeping overhead. In others, he is dressed in a webinar costume, goes for a walk, shows his beard to understand my opinion of her.
But the thing he always wanted to talk about the most was the creation of an independent review board to investigate potential wrongdoing in Canada. He deeply believed in the importance of this, and by the time I knew him, he became increasingly frustrated that, despite the positive signs here and there, it had not yet happened.
For the past two years, he has also been very focused on the case of Odelia and Nerisa Cuevezans, two Saskatchewan sisters who have been serving nearly 30 years for a murder their cousin admitted to committing. David advocates for their freedom, both publicly and privately.
“WHEN’S YOUR STORY coming out,” he wrote to me more than once when I was working on an article on the Sisters’ case. The idea of illegally convicted people being in prison was painful for him. He insisted that the sisters should be released NOW.
He was passionate about these causes – even relentless, a trait he no doubt learned from his mother and tried to emulate. But it was not easy for him. Even after decades out of prison, after all these many speeches, interviews, and events, it was deeply painful for David to talk about these parts of his life. I could see how hard he worked to keep his anger at bay.
During our interview in 2019, David told me that he continues to make public appearances because he needs the money he receives from them, but also because he feels obliged to do what he can for other wrongfully convicted people.
“How could I not help?” he asked me. His eyes searched for mine.
He told me that at almost every second public event, a mother would go out and say that their son or daughter had been wrongfully convicted and ask for his help.
“And it’s really hard,” he said. “Because they don’t seem to realize that David Milgaard is just a human being. That I can’t really do much to help their son or daughter in their situation. “
Maybe that’s another part of what’s so deeply connected to people. How, even after everything he had been through, he still wanted to make things right.
But where his mother had appeared tireless, it was obvious to me that David was tired. In April, he sent me news of his plans to end advocacy. I told him that I was glad that he was able to make that choice if he felt right about him and his children.
“I’m doing it because I feel like I can’t give it up,” he told a Saskatoon Star Phoenix reporter. They talked about the 30th anniversary of his release from prison. “And at the same time, I feel like I have to give it up because I really have to give what’s left of my life to my family.”
He died exactly four weeks later.
I found out about his death as I was preparing to leave my hotel room in Moose Jaw on Sunday. The news surprised me. It seemed too early, such an unjust and unjust ending after all he had been through. As one of my friends said: “One would think that one should live at least 100 to …
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