Ashley's Ashes
In early November 2021, the family of Ashley Marie Simpson began planning her 37th birthday celebration. Parties at the Simpson’s farm in Niagara-on-the-Lake were legendary and attracted friends, family and plenty of strays who were like kin to her parents. Cooks by profession, John and Cindy knew how to throw a great shindig. John set a menu that included mountains of shaved beef and ham, scalloped potatoes, green beans, and salad followed by an array of pies and tarts.
Planning a party during Covid was tricky. The guests were told to arrive in their cars and trucks, give their regards to the masked family, and take their celebration back home. The immediate family were planning to stay for an intimate dinner complete with a bon fire, Beatles tunes, and fireworks set off among the peach trees.
The party would be missing Ashley’s mother Cindy who was working on the Great Lakes. Cindy’s job took her out to sea for months at a time cooking on cargo ships that moved goods from the Welland Canal, through the lakes, into the St. Lawrence Seaway and back again.
The idea of missing her first born daughter’s party was making Cindy sad. As she peered through her tiny porthole in her bunk, the tears began to stream down her weary face. She looked at a photo of her daughter pinned to the wall and closed her eyes.
Mamma, don’t cry. Everything is going to be all right. Don’t worry.
“That’s a mother’s job, darlin,’” Cindy thought to herself, then shook off her melancholy like the droplets of a morning shower. She picked up her laptop and headed to Facebook.
“It’s Ashley’s birthday on November 15,” Cindy wrote. “We’d appreciate you posting any photos and memories of her on that day. Thanks!”
She signed the post with three hearts, one for Ashley, one for her, and one for John.
Then Cindy settled down for a troubled sleep.
Living in rural British Columbia is not for sissies, and Ashley knew she had picked a hard scrabble life working in sometimes horrific conditions. But learning the cooking trade from her dad fit her like a scuba suit. She loved getting up early to fight the bugs to bring in a feed of fresh fish, partying late into the evening with her mates and getting up at the crack of dawn to make breakfast for a crowd. She fancied herself a vagabond, a Gypsy, and proudly tattooed that word on her arm.
Over the years, Ashley worked in some pretty sketchy places including lumber and fishing camps and spent her summers at the Loghouse, a posh resort in Huntsville, Ontario. Ashley and her sisters grew up there and were as comfortable as the tadpoles swimming in the lake. In the winter of 2016, she was planning to return to Huntsville after she and her dad finished up a temporary assignment in Pink Mountain, B.C.
“I can’t wait to get back home,” she told her Facebook friends. “I’ll see you soon.”
A few months before her return to Ontario, Ashley met Derek Favell and everything changed. She spotted him in the bar where she sometimes worked and struck up a conversation. Derek was just her type, a slight handsome roughnecker with a mysterious and troubled past, a man who didn’t meet a drink or a drug he didn’t like.
Ashley knew John wouldn’t approve. Even Derek’s own friends shook their heads when he introduced them to his new raven-haired girlfriend.
“He’s a slut, Ash,” one of them warned her after she caught Derek texting other girls.
“He’s an asshole,” her dad told her when Ashley broke the news that she was going to stay in B.C. with Derek. “You can really pick ‘em.”
“I know, Daddio, but I love him,” she argued. “And I love his kids. I think he’s the one. Don’t worry! I’ll talk to mamma every day on Facetime, and I’ll be home for Tara’s shower. Promise!”
A few days later, John hugged his feisty daughter and kissed her goodbye.
He didn’t want to leave her, but Huntsville beckoned.
“She’s a grown assed woman,” one of her cousins reminded him. “It’s her life, Johnny.”
He left, heartbroken, but excited to get his garden planted at the Loghouse, and get some fishing in. He hadn’t seen his other kids, and the grands in months, and he sorely missed Cindy. Their life wasn’t easy, and John and Cindy were rarely together, but there were still sparks after 35 years. Ashley seemed happy and isn’t that what any dad wants for his daughter?
Months passed quickly, and Ashley kept her promise to Facetime her mother every evening. Despite Ashley’s sunny demeanor, Cindy knew there was trouble in paradise. It was no secret that Ashley’s relationship with Derek was on the rocks.
He’d quit his job and convinced Ashley to move to his childhood home of Salmon Arm, B.C. to be closer to his children and his estranged wife.
“You both quit your jobs?”
“Yeah, mama, but we’re going to be fine. We’ll pick up odd jobs, and we’re going to hunt for gold and gems. Derek thinks there’s a big market in them.”
Cindy shook her head. She knew that once Ashley had made up her mind, she couldn’t be swayed.
“Well, just be careful. I’ll call you.”
“Love you, mama.”
Cindy Simpson sat up, a cold sweat beading on her chest and forehead. “Ashley!” she cried. She had a knot in her gut, and a lump in her throat.
Something’s wrong.
She got up from her bunk and shook it off, showered and got dressed for the morning shift, frying eggs on the galley stove and cooking rashes of bacon in the industrial oven. This afternoon, she would make cupcakes and Nanaimo bars, then prep the salads and cut the fries. It was good work, fun work, something to distract her. But she couldn’t get Ashley out of her mind.
The time difference was a pain in the ass. She had to wait until after supper to Facetime her daughter who always looked forward to her calls. But there was no call that evening, or for several evenings after that. Ashley’s friends started to email Cindy asking what was going on with the self-professed “selfie queen”.
Cindy was worried. This was not like her child, not like her at all.
And then came the news from her boyfriend. They’d had a fight and she walked off into the night.
“When?” Cindy demanded.
“A few days ago,” Derek mumbled. “She said she was going home for Tara’s baby shower. I guess she went up to the store, maybe got a ride.”
“Have you called the cops?” she screamed, tears welling in her sleepless eyes.
“Well, no. I think she’s on her way home. I don’t know.”
Cindy hung up, smashing her tablet on the bed, and called John. Then she called the RCMP.
The next six years were a blur. John would describe his life as hell on Earth.
Sometimes to kill time, John Simpson would get in his car and just drive around the countryside. But he just couldn’t do it anymore. Anytime, he got in the car, he’d start to sob until his shoulders shook, and he had to pull over to compose himself.
His once idyllic vagabond life was all but destroyed. The lodge in Huntsville that the family had relied upon for work, had been flattened by a tornado the year Ashley went missing. The government had taken away his employment insurance because he had violated a cardinal and cruel rule that a person could not collect it if they weren’t available for work in their home province. John had violated that rule travelling to B.C. from Ontario to look for his daughter.
He had tried to go back to work on the ships, but he found himself in the hospital after a bowel blockage nearly killed him. A week later, he returned home with a colostomy bag, leaving him unavailable for work for months.
Cindy became the family’s sole breadwinner, off on the Great Lakes cooking for months at a time. When she wasn’t cooking and cleaning, she worked the phones talking to the media at all hours – she did anything and everything to keep Ashley’s name in front of the public.
John turned to good works to try to heal his broken heart. He organized golf tournaments, and raffles, raised money for the families of the missing and murdered. He vowed never to give up until his daughter was found – alive or dead.
He set about to build a base of supporters, Ashley’s Army he called it, to make her legacy about finding missing and murdered women. On the fifth anniversary of Ashley’s disappearance, her loyal subjects lit hundreds of candles and lanterns across Canada. John and Cindy willingly ripped open the wounds once again to tell her story and beg for her to be found.
“We need to bring her home,” Cindy told a reporter. “We need our girl.”
The birthday party went off without a hitch. Family and friends arrived and feasted on a buffet fit for the lady of the manor Ashley had once dreamed of becoming.
Cindy was watching on Facetime from her bunk, grateful for the love and devotion of her family and Ashley’s friends. But she was still nursing a terrible wound in her heart. She went to bed and decided it was time to plan her daughter’s funeral.
Two weeks later, Cindy answered a knock at the door of the Simpson family farmhouse. She had been expecting her visitors but when she saw them, she collapsed, sobbing. There stood two female RCMP officers who had flown from British Columbia to meet with the family and bring them a gift. Cindy opened the package and pulled out two rings, one the engagement ring that John had given her, the one she had given to Ashley on her 30th birthday.
“We wanted to bring them to you personally,” the officer smiled. And then they all burst into tears and hugged each other.
For five years and eight months, Ashley Simpson lay in a shallow grave amid the wildflowers and rocks on a mountainside.
She was finally found by the RCMP officer assigned to her case who was acting on an anonymous tip. It was hard to see anything when the officer got to the area, she told Cindy. The sky was dark with heavy December clouds. Suddenly a single beam of light shone through the trees. The officer couldn’t say why, but she decided to follow it.
It was there that the officer found the remains of Ashley who was still wearing her mothers’ rings. The officer dropped to her knees and began to weep. That same day, her partner arrested Derek Favell and in February 2022 he went on trial for her murder.
A few weeks later, John and his daughter Amanda flew to British Columbia to collect the remains of their beloved Ashley. Friends and family had raised thousands of dollars for the Simpson family to allow them to make this trip, and to attend the trial of the man who had taken Ashley’s life.
John and Amanda picked up the box, thanked the funeral director and returned to their hotel. After having a good cry, John looked at Amanda.
“I need some fresh air,” he said.
John walked through the streets of Abbotsford carrying his daughter on his hip. He rounded the corner away from the hotel and headed for a nearby park where he sat on a bench quietly with his daughter’s ashes beside him. John began to talk to her, sharing his feelings, his grief, and his gratitude. Then he filled her in on his plans to dedicate the rest of his life to supporting other families of missing women and girls.
He held her close. John was never letting her out of his sight again.