Back in Toronto, his parents decided to send him and brother Harvey to boarding school, choosing one that would have appealed to his more serious sensibilities – Upper Canada College, which has honed young minds from Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff and grocery magnate Galen Weston Jr. to jailed media tycoon Conrad Black.
Although the family had no ties with the elite school for boys, which is expensive and has high standards for enrolment, a family member says Mr. Sovka's impressive CV helped to “persuade” administrators of the children's potential. Russell was assigned a corner room in Wedd's House, one of UCC's dorms, but didn't exactly fit in.
“At a boarding school, a lot of guys like to goof around and have some fun,” says his former roommate, speaking on condition he not be named. “He was always serious and didn't really get into the banter, joking and friendship aspect of it all.”
It was very difficult to have just a basic conversation with him. … I can't even recall him having a single person he spent a lot of time with. — Russell Williams's former roommate
The two boys had little in common: Russ liked playing his trumpet and studying, while the roommate was into girls. Russ listened to the same Diana Ross song over and over, irritating someone with a taste for The Clash and Talking Heads. He also folded his laundry fastidiously, while across the room, junk piled up. The only time they were forced to be together, the nightly study hour, was spent in silence.
Their differences were superficial and surmountable, but Russ refused to open up. “My parents had just gotten divorced … so theoretically we had something in common,” the roommate explains. “I don't think it was something that he even raised with me.”
He contends that Russ “lacked any social skills whatsoever. It was very difficult to have just a basic conversation with him. … I can't even recall him having a single person he spent a lot of time with.”
All the former UCC bandmates, teachers and staff who agreed to discuss Russell Williams agreed that they could think of no one close to him. The future military man didn't join the cadet corps.
In his final year, he served as a prefect, a position often decided by student vote. But UCC alumni recall that he was selected by the staff, and moved to a floor reserved for students in Grades 9 and 10, to keep the youngsters in check.
UCC has an active alumni network that maintains a password-protected, online database that “old boys” can use to keep track of each other. There is no contact information for Russ. He is listed as “lost.”
A bearded Russell Sovka lightened up after enrolling at the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus and starting a relationship with a student from Japan.
Sudden transformation
If the first few weeks were any indication, Russ Sovka was destined to experience the same isolation as a student at the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus.
He was assigned to live with five other students in unit C8, a townhouse in a sea of brown brick residence buildings. Before his roommates had a chance even to figure out where their classes were, he announced who was buying meals that week, who was scheduled to do the cooking and how they would rotate through the jobs he had assigned each of them.
“I thought, ‘This is one dude that I'm going to keep my distance from,' just because he was a little bossy,” recalls Jeff Farquhar, who was among those on the duty roster.
He was so orderly, focused and authoritative – keeping his own room spotless and persuading his roommates to wear slippers – that nicknames came fast and furious: Drill Sergeant, Sergeant Major and Mother Goose.
