illustration by marc ngui

Nicholas Vachon was born Sept. 12, 1981, at Montfort Hospital in Ottawa to Isabelle and Claude Vachon, two quiet schoolteachers who lived in Curran, a small village about 80 km east of Ottawa. Nicholas was their first son, the third of five Vachon children.

As a boy, Nicholas was serious beyond his years, Claude says. He brooded about global issues like pollution and foreign conflicts, and pestered his father with questions about the 1991 Iraq war. Art was an outlet, and he’d spend hours drawing elaborate pictures of war scenes and sinking ships.

At the village school, the other kids bullied Nicholas. But his younger sister, Marie-Claude, worshipped him. In winter, they’d take their sleds to the highest hill in town, packing a picnic so they could spend the entire day on the slope. “We did everything together,” Marie-Claude says. “I wanted to be with him everywhere he went.” Continue…