My ex-wife is suing me for stalking her across Ontario. I’ve been recovering from spinal surgery…

The Ghost of Toronto General

I laughed when the process server handed me those papers. Not because anything was funny but because of the titanium rod in my spine that had kept me flat on my back for the past four months. My hands trembled as I read the first line: Notice of legal action, harassment and stalking.

My ex-wife Patricia was suing me for following her across Ontario, showing up at her workplace in Ottawa, her sister’s cottage in Muskoka, and outside her physiotherapy clinic in Kingston. The dates were all there, precise and damning: March through June 2024. The same months I’d been recovering from spinal fusion surgery in Toronto General Hospital.

My name is Robert Harrison; I’m 63 years old. Until that lawsuit landed in my lap, I thought the worst chapter of my life was already written. My construction company had collapsed three years prior when our largest client went bankrupt owing us $840,000.

The domino effect destroyed everything: the business, the house in Oakville, my 28-year marriage to Patricia, and eventually my health. The stress had compressed my vertebrae so badly that by last February I could barely stand. Surgery was the only option.

But here’s what made that lawsuit so absurd it was almost funny: during every single date Patricia claimed I’d been stalking her, I’d been in a hospital bed on the 7th floor of Toronto General. I was unable to walk more than 10 feet without collapsing. My surgeon, Dr. Patel, had been very clear about the recovery timeline: 12 weeks minimum before attempting stairs, and 16 weeks before driving.

The lawsuit arrived in week 17. I called my lawyer, Graham Chen, immediately. Graham had handled my bankruptcy proceedings and knew the whole ugly story of my divorce.

When I read him the allegations over the phone, there was a long pause.

“Robert, this is actually good news,”

he said finally.

“Good news? My ex-wife is accusing me of criminal harassment.”

“Good news because you have ironclad proof,”

Graham said.

“You couldn’t have done it. Hospital records, nursing logs, security footage. You were monitored 24/7 for 4 months. This case will be dismissed in 5 minutes.”

I wanted to believe him, but Graham hadn’t seen what I’d seen in the envelope. Patricia had included photographs, 12 of them, printed in color. In each one, a man who looked disturbingly like me stood in the background.

He was the same height, about 6’1″, and the same build, though I’d lost weight during recovery. He had the same receding gray hairline and the same wire-rimmed glasses I’d worn for 15 years. In one photo taken outside a Starbucks in Ottawa, the man was even wearing a navy windbreaker identical to one I owned.

“She has pictures, Graham,”

I said.

“Someone who looks exactly like me.”

There was another pause.

“Email them to me. We’ll deal with this,”

Graham replied.

“In the meantime, start documenting everything. Pull your hospital records, visitor logs, everything.”

I spent that evening going through my phone: every text message, every call log, and every email from February through June. My daughter Amy had visited twice a week, and my son Michael had flown in from Vancouver once. My brother Thomas had come by every Sunday.

Beyond that, my social circle during those months had consisted entirely of nurses, physiotherapists, and the elderly man in the next bed who watched game shows at full volume. The lawsuit demanded $200,000 in damages for emotional distress and requested a restraining order. The court date was set for August 15th, six weeks away.

Patricia’s lawyer had filed in Ottawa, three hours from my apartment in Toronto. Just traveling there would be agonizing with my back. That night I couldn’t sleep, not from pain, though there was plenty of that, but from the sheer wrongness of it all.

Patricia and I had our problems; certainly, the business failure had poisoned everything between us. She blamed me for not having better contracts, for trusting the wrong people, and for losing the comfortable life she’d grown accustomed to. By the time she filed for divorce, we could barely be in the same room.

But stalking and harassment—that wasn’t me. That had never been me. I went back through the photos with a magnifying glass.

In the Ottawa Starbucks shot, the man’s face was partially visible in profile. The resemblance was uncanny with the same nose and same jawline, but something felt off. The way he stood, shoulders slightly hunched forward, was wrong.

I’d spent months in physio learning to stand straight to protect my spine. This man’s posture was all wrong. The next morning, I called Toronto General’s records department.

Getting copies of everything took three days and $200 in administrative fees, but it was worth it. There were 416 pages documenting every minute of my hospital stay. Admission was on February 12th at 6:00 a.m., with surgery lasting 9 hours.

I had post-op complications with an infection requiring an extended ICU stay. I was transferred to the recovery ward on February 28th and discharged on June 8th, exactly 117 days after admission. The nursing logs were particularly detailed.

Every four hours, a nurse had checked on me and recorded vital signs, medication administration, and meals consumed. I’d been on a morphine drip for the first three weeks and couldn’t have walked to the bathroom unassisted for six weeks. I hadn’t left the hospital floor until week 14, when I’d been wheeled down for a CT scan.

Graham reviewed everything and scheduled a call with Patricia’s lawyer, a woman named Judith Brennan. I listened on speakerphone as Graham laid out our defense.

“Miss Brennan, my client was hospitalized during every date mentioned in your complaint,”

Graham said.

“We have comprehensive medical records proving he was physically incapable of being in Ottawa, Muskoka, or Kingston during those months.”

Judith’s voice was sharp.

“Mr. Chen, we have photographic evidence and eyewitness testimony,”

she said.

“Six different people confirmed seeing Mr. Harrison at these locations.”

“Six people identified someone who looked like my client,”

Graham corrected.

“There’s a significant difference.”

“The photographs are quite clear. And I should mention we also have records of concerning phone calls to my client during this period,”

Judith added.

“Calls from Mr. Harrison’s cell phone number.”

My stomach dropped. I’d called Patricia exactly twice during my hospital stay. Once was to inform her about the surgery, and once was to tell her I’d survived it.

Both conversations had lasted less than two minutes and been purely informational.

“What calls?”

I asked, breaking my silence.

“Mr. Harrison. Lovely to hear from you,”

Judith said, her tone dripping sarcasm.

“My client received 17 calls from your number between March and June. She wisely chose not to answer any of them. Your voicemails were disturbing.”

“That’s impossible. Check the phone records. I made two calls to Patricia in 4 months,”

I said.

“We have her phone records, Mr. Harrison. They tell a different story.”

After the call ended, Graham looked troubled.

“We need to get your phone records immediately, and we need to figure out who this lookalike is,”

he said.

“You believe me, right, that I didn’t make those calls?”

I asked.

“I believe the hospital records, but someone went to considerable effort to make it look like you. This isn’t random harassment. This is targeted,”

Graham replied.

I requested my phone records from Rogers that afternoon. While waiting for them to arrive, I started thinking about who might want to frame me. The business bankruptcy had created plenty of enemies: subcontractors who’d lost money, suppliers who’d been left holding bad debts, and even former employees who’d lost their jobs.

But three years had passed. Why come after me now through Patricia? Then I remembered something.

During one of Amy’s visits in April, she’d mentioned that Patricia had a new boyfriend. It was someone she’d met at her book club in February, right before my surgery. Amy hadn’t met him but said Patricia seemed happier than she’d been in years.

“What was his name?”

I’d asked at the time.

“Dennis something. Dennis Maxwell, I think,”

she replied.

I pulled out my laptop and searched for “Dennis Maxwell Ottawa,” but there was nothing relevant. I tried “Dennis Maxwell Toronto,” and still nothing. I was about to give up when I had another thought: what if he wasn’t from here?

What if Patricia had met him online, not at book club? I logged into Facebook for the first time in months and searched Patricia’s friends list. There he was.

Dennis Maxwell’s profile picture showed a man in his late 50s with graying hair and a slim build, standing in front of the Rideau Canal. I clicked through to his photos. My blood went cold.

Dennis Maxwell looked like he could be my brother. Not identical, but close enough. He had the same height based on the photos, similar features, and a similar style of glasses.

He even wore his hair the same way—what was left of it. I took screenshots and sent them to Graham immediately, then called him.

“Tell me I’m not crazy. Look at this guy,”

I said.