'A clean slate': Misha Pavelick's father says he's finding peace after killer's conviction

Lorne Pavelick spent 19 years with a cloud looming over his head. 

He remembers wondering, "what’s going to happen? Is this ever going to end?"

Now, with his son's killer convicted, Lorne is waking up to peace and clarity.

“I love people, I love what I do, I love my life, but there was always something missing in the context of my son,” he told CBC on Monday. “But my attitude this morning was ‘I'm optimistic.’ Today's a clean slate. I get to live today.”

Earlier this month, a 36-year-old man was found guilty of second-degree murder for killing then-19-year-old Misha Pavelick, Lorne's son, at the Kinookemaw Campground near Regina Beach in 2006. 

CBC News can’t identify the man under the Youth Criminal Justice Act because he was 17 at the time of the death. 

Lorne said it's a new experience, waking up and not instinctively reaching for the phone to call the RCMP for updates, or checking in with family and friends.

Reflecting on the journey, he remembered a moment toward the end of the month-long jury trial where he decided to turn away from resentment and anger, instead of giving in.

“You cannot fill the hole of resentment or anger,” he said. “It will absorb any goodness you have.”

Lorne said those feelings were replaced with the knowledge that everything was going to work out, even if not in the way the family had hoped.

Then came the guilty verdict.

“I personally wasn't prepared for it, because I wasn't sure what was going to be happening,” he said. “But it sunk in.”

Now, Lorne is allowing himself to grieve, a process he said has evolved over time.

“I was a little bit of a cynic in the past when people would say, 'well, you need closure,'” he said.