Vicky Biesty never got the chance to meet her late father, Ray Leturneau, but her search for a connection has led her to Thorold where she believes Leturneau fathered two children in the early ‘70s.
Says Biesty, “We don’t know their names. We know nothing. All we know is that he had two kids in that area because it’s close to St. Catharines and he was working as a contractor there, a drywaller.”
Biesty grew up with her mother and stepdad in Timmins, and periodically spent her time looking for Leturneau
“I’ve been looking for him since I’ve been little. When I was sixteen I made a thousand phone calls to every Ray Leturneau there was. I knew growing up I had an older sister and (my mother) heard that after me there was a son,” but Biesty only ever managed to track down a cousin who lives in North Bay.
Then, during a Google search this past summer she stumbled upon Ray Leturneau’s obituary.
“It was heartbreaking. It’s somebody you’ve been trying find your whole life to get to know and you’re never going to have the answers. I reached out to the funeral home and they got in touch with my youngest sister (Ashley) and from there we just found more and more people.”
Her half-sister Ashley helped Biesty piece together some of her father’s past.
Says Biesty, “He raised her. He was very private and didn’t tell her a lot until she was sixteen. Then she was told there were a few of us and we were all being raised by someone else.”
Biesty and her sister have managed to track down a few of their siblings and they now believe there could be two more, with two different mothers, in Thorold.
”As far as we know in Thorold there is a brother and a sister but we’re not 100% sure of the gender. We think it was around ’73 and they are probably about a year apart.”
Biesty hopes that someone in Thorold will recognize Ray and be able to provide another little piece of her father’s life, saying, “We’re just kind of curious. We all kind of look a little similar.”
If you think you might recognize Ray Leturneau or know somebody who knew him, you can email Vicky Biesty.
