‘PRINCE OF KINDNESS’
Canadian hostage remembered
Kimberley Preston-Stevens last bumped into Robert Hall a couple years ago at the Walmart store in Campbell River, B.C.
Hall, a retired fellow actor from the local theatre group, told her he had sold most of his belongings and was getting ready to sail around the world.
Hall didn’t say exactly where he was headed, but he was pumped.
“He was so excited about his upcoming world travel,” she said.
On Monday, Preston-Stevens, like all of Hall’s friends and family, got the news they had been dreading.
Nine months after Islamist militants took Hall and three others hostage from a marina on the southern coast of Mindanao, Hall’s captors followed through on their promise to execute him if an $8-million ransom demand had not been met. They had previously killed one of the other hostages, fellow Canadian John Ridsdel.
The fate of the other two hostages; Hall’s Filipina girlfriend, Marites Flor, and Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad; was not known.
Hall’s family could not be reached for comment on Monday, but his friends recalled the skilled welder as the “prince of kindness,” a well-read “renaissance man” with a generous spirit and love for soccer.
“I will always remember how happy you were every time you saw my son and spoil him to bits,” Flor’s sister-in-law, Mona Pesasico-Ramos Flor, wrote on Facebook. “Gave him chocolates and brought him with you whenever you and (Marites) went out to eat.”
In a recent interview with the Toronto Sun, Vanda Killeen, who was friends with Hall when the Calgary native lived in Spruce Grove, Alta., described Hall as a “quirky” guy who once showed up for a dinner theatre date in a very old van with “one of those stuffed, half-body things hanging out the back. It was a tad morbid, but Bob’s idea of a joke. I wasn’t that impressed at the time, but I’d pretty well give anything to have Bob pull up today in his old, dirty van with that stupid thing hanging out the back.”
While he was skilled in the trades, Hall also loved to cut loose as an actor.
Peter Dranchuk said he met Hall several years ago at the “Monday Night Club,” a workshop that provided actors in the Edmonton area with film and video acting training. He directed Hall in a couple of short films.
“He was one of the best actors at Monday Night Club, always contributing the best performances, always convincing in any role he was cast in. Some would call him a character actor,” Dranchuk said.
“I never saw Robert get cross with anyone. He was always a gentleman and a professional. He always helped me as a young director, and he always helped other actors in a way that was gracious kind and welcomed.”
One of those actors was Laura Milloy of Edmonton.
“I am heartbroken,” she wrote on Facebook Monday. “Robert was just the sweetest guy and my friend. How could this happen to him? When I was a young and naive 20-something wanting to pursue film and TV, he was so encouraging and excited for me. He gave me advice, acted with me, often playing my father, and had a very calm and loving energy about him.”
Milloy said Hall’s family “worked tirelessly behind the scenes to get him free. I have no words of comfort for them because this is a travesty. It’s a huge injustice and I am devastated along with them.”
Not one for settling down, Hall moved to B.C. In Campbell River, Hall joined a community theatre group, the Rivercity Players, and landed a lead role in 2013 in Sin, Sex and the CIA, a production that the local newspaper described as a “ridiculously funny comedy.”
He was just a “really nice, gentle, sweet person,” Preston-Stevens said. “Very gracious.”
When she bumped into him in the summer of 2014 at Walmart, the two didn’t talk long but she does remember this: “He decided it was time to follow his dream.”