"Frankly, the feeling of relief on the decision was very similar to the feeling I had when he was convicted.”
That was former St. Albert resident Bret McCann’s reaction after the man convicted of killing his parents, Lyle and Marie McCann, was denied day parole. The St. Albert seniors disappeared in July 2010.
Travis Vader’s request for parole was denied on Dec. 12, seven years after he was found guilty in the deaths of the McCanns. Their bodies have never been found.
"It is very important to myself, and my family, that my parents' remains be located, and buried properly. I think it is a critical component of our grieving," Bret McCann said in a statement. "And the one individual who knows where my parents' remains are, has said nothing."
It was an emotional week for the McCann family, and the days leading up to the Parole Board of Canada took their toll.
“I had a lot of anxiety building up to this,” he said in an interview. “We were all quite anxious and we did a lot of preparation, like impact statements." The hearing took place at 3 a.m. for McCann, who lives in Australia.
Vader was found guilty in 2017, after a trial that saw a conviction downgraded from second-degree murder to a lesser charge of manslaughter, because of Justice Denny Thomas's erroneous use of an outdated section of the Criminal Code.
To this day, Vader denies he was involved in the deaths of the McCanns or has any knowledge of the location of their bodies.
The Edmonton Journal reported Vader’s parole officer, Ryan Nash, told Vader an admission of guilt is not required to receive parole, but that it would “lessen the harm you caused.” Nash also said the board “is not convinced his risk can be managed in the community."
McCann is an advocate for a "no body, no parole" law to be implemented in Canada. He believes Vader’s rehabilitation relies on an admission of guilt and proof of where the bodies are located.
“It can’t just be lip service. He has to say what happened, show what happened. Prove what happened. Prove where are the bodies, right?” McCann said.
McCann said the whirlwind around the hearing took him back to the initial investigation and trials.
“It’s been going on for 14 years now,” McCann said.
“He’s finally convicted and sentenced in 2017, and then there was these appeals. So that sort of took up the whole decade up until 2020, so it was kind of a relief to get away from all that. Our grandchildren are growing up. We put it in the back of our minds. But this brought it all back."
Now that it has passed, he finds some comfort in the board's decision.
Since the conviction, McCann has been living in Australia with his daughter and granddaughters, and has sold his family’s house in St. Albert. He splits his time between Australia and visiting his son back in Canada. He tries to look forward as much as he can, but finds it difficult.
“I don’t think we’ll ever get over this,” he said. “It’s important to us that this guy doesn’t get away with it. I feel like if he gets out of prison he’ll hurt somebody else.”
McCann hasn’t been back to St. Albert since selling the house but thinks a return may be in the cards in the near future.
“We have just been going back to Vancouver, but I think we’ll go back to the Edmonton area for one more time. We had these bronze swans made up by some artists in the Vancouver area,” he said, referencing the swan statues set up in Grandin Pond Ecopark. “So I’d like to see that.”
