Vanessa Brown - The Forest City Killer: A Serial Murderer, a Cold-Case Sleuth, and a Search for Justice

London, Ontario, my joy, my sorrow.

Orlo Miller

An introductory description of my hometown of London, Ontario the Forest City usually starts with population, geography, industry.

Almost 400,000.

Halfway between Detroit and Toronto in a valley surrounded by moraines, bisected by the Thames River, at whose forks the city was founded.

The dried-up industrial background and economic struggles of the average mid-sized North American city, a thriving medical science community, a burgeoning tech sector. Theres a university here.

This is all the boring stuff.

Ive lived in London, Ontario, my entire life. People say its a small town wearing big-city clothes. There are two Londons, really. One of them is packed with aluminum siding, chain restaurants, and big box stores. The other one is where I live. Its full of art and music and eccentrics. Its a community where everyone is only one or two degrees of separation from everyone else. My partner and I live in a downtown-adjacent pocket of tiny century cottages, and we make our living with our used bookstore on Richmond Row. Our social sphere is the local arts scene and have spent the past twenty years cultivating our obsession with Londons past. Sometimes we joke that London is the real site of the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks.

In all sincerity, London has many similarities to that twisted small town. It has a wild vibe about it down by the river, where addicts and homeless people have set up camps, but where you can also see posh yuppies jogging along beautifully kept paved pathways. In the east end are modest, sometimes shabby, bungalows with faded plastic toys on the lawn. There are seedy motels with heart-shaped bathtubs, flea markets, and pawnshops. We also offer enormous beautiful mansions, shaded by heritage oak trees lining boulevards with cobblestone sidewalks. The summers are hot. The humidity is oppressive and the mosquitoes are massive. In the winter, youll find yourself trudging through knee-deep snow. Were at the bottom of an ice-age valley, so your allergies act up like crazy. In between brutalist and ugly glass skyscrapers, two cathedrals chime the hours downtown and have done so for the past century; one of these has Tiffany stained-glass windows.

Such deep contrasts mean you can experience a lot of different ways of life here. Ive hung around the corner of Dundas and Richmond streets (known locally as DNR, for all the drug addicts found there) wearing a dog collar and smoking clove cigarettes, partying with ten homeless kids in a one-bedroom apartment. Ive also had dinner at the university presidents manor on the northern hill of the city, overlooking wealthy Masonville. Some of the homes in Woodfield or Old North are over-the-top gorgeous, with detailed paint jobs on nineteenth-century wooden gingerbread trim, cherry wainscoting, pantries stocked with fancy jars, and living rooms you arent allowed to sit in. At one time, London had more millionaires per capita than any other city in the country. It also has about as bad a drug problem as Vancouver. Each aspect of the Forest City has its own lore, a cast of characters that is unforgettable, but perhaps only meaningful to someone who has spent a lifetime living here.