Calgary tragedy exposes harsh reality: Children most often killed by family, StatCan says
Posted May 3, 2026 11:41 am.
Most children killed in Canada lose their lives at the hands of someone who should protect them.
A horrible reality underscored by the recent murder of two Calgary siblings — their father now accused of killing the pair.
Of anywhere from 40 to 60 children killed in Canada every year, it is most often at the hands of someone they know, according to Statistics Canada. Family members were found guilty in 63 per cent of the 1,990 solved cases of children and youth homicides between 1974 and 1999. From 1997 to 2006, 56 per cent of children killed by a family member were killed by their fathers.
The president of the Calgary Police Association, John Orr, spent nearly a decade as a homicide detective. During that time, he helped put several killers who took the lives of children behind bars.
In the bulk of child murders Orr investigated, someone who ought to care and love them instead ended their life.
“Yes, they knew the offender, and quite often it is someone who was meant to protect them,” he says.
Two siblings, aged three and five, were found dead in Calgary on Thursday. Police say the father called 911, summoning them to a vehicle parked outside a police station in North Haven — the lifeless bodies of his children inside.
Even after being face-to-face with people — some who confessed or were later convicted of taking the life of a child — Orr remains baffled that someone in a position of protecting a child could do the exact opposite.
“I’ll often say it’s like trying to smell the colour nine. They are impossible to understand, and even when you get an answer from an accused, it still doesn’t make sense,” Orr says.
“Sometimes there are mental health aspects involved, and sometimes there is not. It’s very dependent on every case. Really, the goal is to maintain that objectivity and investigate to the highest standard possible, to find any and all evidence and bring it forward.”
The father in the Calgary double homicide faces two counts of first-degree murder.
Orr says investigators working on those cases now have the task of balancing what needs to be done while trying to make sense of the loss of innocent lives.
Watch: ‘Devastating and unimaginable’: Calgary police charge father with murder in death of his 2 kids
Adanech Sahilie, executive director for the Immigrant Outreach Society, called it a “nightmare for the community.”
“No one expected such a horrible news, and it’s really hard for the mom,” said Sahilie.
As the children’s mother and those who knew the siblings grapple with the deaths, Orr says many in the emergency services community are also left heartbroken.
“There’s a whole bunch of people, as far as police go, that these investigations touch from the 911 operator to the dispatchers to the first responders, who have a huge role in crime scenes technicians. There are a number of people who have a part in bringing this to court,” he says.
“It still, after all these years, makes me so proud to see how they maintain their professionalism in the face of things that most people could never imagine coming across.”
