Accused Canadian colonel comes from accomplished but fractured family

By Adrian Humphreys
National Post
February 11, 2010


TORONTO — Col. Russell Williams, the Canadian Forces base commander who is charged with two murders and two separate sexual assaults, showed little interest in repairing the fractured family life that followed him since he was young.

Williams, 46, grew up amid great accomplishment but also instability, say several members of his family on both sides.

Two years ago his mother, Nonie, and brother, Harvey, reached out to Williams in a bid at reconciliation following his parent's divorce, the second time the fast-rising military man's home life was torn asunder.

"Our relationship with him was broken off in early 2001 when our mother's divorce from my stepfather caused a deep rift between him and my mother and myself," said his brother, Harvey Williams.

"We rarely had any contact until two years ago when my mother and I tried to find a way to repair the family rift. We have had only minimal contact with him in the past two years."

"We were shocked and appalled to learn of the crimes with which Col. Williams is being charged," he said in a written statement, calling it "alarming and distressing news."

Similarly, relatives of Williams' stepfather, Jerry Sovka, an eminent nuclear scientist, described a family that maintained little contact.

Relatives of Sovka say the scientist's globe-spanning travel with high-profile jobs — including his current position as a senior official with ITER, an international megaproject to create an experimental thermonuclear reactor in southern France — have meant little connection.

Sovka's father's funeral more than a decade ago was a rare opportunity for the wider Sovka family to come together.

Family matriarchs and patriarchs have been telephoning kin with the shocking news that the man at the heart of the allegations is a relative. But most have only vague memories of Williams as a child.

Even with the distant connection, it remains a shock.

"Our prayers go out to our extended family during this difficult time," said Jason Sovka, Sovka's nephew.

Born in England, Williams was still young when his father, David, split with his mother and the youngster continued to live with his mother and his new stepfather, Dr. Jerry Sovka.

Sovka grew up on farms in Cranford and Coaldale, Alta., as one of three sons of Czech immigrants, but eschewed agriculture and the lure of oil for the emerging science of nuclear technology and he accepted a scholarship to study at the University of Birmingham in England, where it is believed he met Nonie Williams.

He returned to Canada for a job at Atomic Energy Canada Ltd., in Toronto, where he helped design Canada's early Candu nuclear plants, and later as a senior engineer with Ontario Hydro while the young Williams attended Toronto's Birchmount Collegiate in Scarborough, near Toronto.

Sovka's work in the nuclear industry led him to move several times, including four years in South Korea, a stint with the Montreal-based engineering firm SNC and Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station in New Brunswick, and even to Hawaii as a chief engineer for the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope, according to an article in the University of Alberta alumni magazine.

For some of this travel, Williams remained in Toronto.

From 1980 to 1982, he completed his high school education at Upper Canada College while boarding at the sprawling private boys school.

While at UCC, Williams was a prefect, whose job was to mentor younger boys, and went by the last name Sovka with the abbreviated first name Russ.

Williams played trumpet, and his interest in jazz is obvious from his entry in the 1982 College Times: he offered a quotation from the legendary American jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong: "If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know." To this he added: "Thank you all to those who made these two years possible, enjoyable."

School officials only realized the connection on Wednesday.

The current vice-principal, Innes van Nostrand, who was in Williams' graduating class, said "most people from our time at the school would remember him as a diligent, responsible, serious hard-working guy who was really good at the trumpet as well."

"The stories and the allegations in general have been pretty shocking for everyone in the broader community, and I think any time anyone would find a situation where someone they went to school with was being implicated, and with those kinds of allegations, the shock is compounded, and certainly that would be the case for the people who were at school here at that time," he said.

Williams then sought higher education and graduated with a degree in economics and political science from the University of Toronto in 1987 before embarking that same year on a military career while returning to his birth name Williams.

While his family life and schooling meant a low profile and quiet existence, in the military he shone.

"He was what we call 'a streamer,' " said a ranking Canadian military officer who did not wish his name to be published. "He was getting groomed, fast-tracked. You have to punch your ticket through certain types of jobs (to enter the senior ranks).

"When you're the commander of the largest airbase in Canada at that age, it says you're going somewhere."

As a pilot during the 1990s he flew VIP flights on the federal government's Challenger aircraft that are used by federal politicians including the prime minister. A series of postings led him to higher rank and greater responsibility.

On July 15, 2009, he was named as the commander of CFB Trenton where he maintained good relationships with the community until his arrest on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Random House Canada has already announced the fall release of a book on Williams.

With files from Kathryn Blaze Carlson

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