Canadian Press
Lynda Huolt was watching the 10 o'clock news on Sunday night when she saw there had been an explosion at a Mexican hotel. She immediately recognized the name.
Her son, Malcolm Johnson, got married there last Wednesday and celebrated his daughter's first birthday there on Saturday.
“I looked and I went, 'Oh my God, the kids are at the hotel, because they showed the hotel, and I went into panic mode, right there,” Huolt said in a phone interview Monday from her home in Prince George, B.C.
“So we tried contacting my son, and he didn't text us back, so I called the hotel and left a message. It was a couple hours later I had gotten a phone call from one of the family members and they said he was missing.”
Huolt phoned the local hospital and Johnson wasn't there, so her call was transferred to the Canadian consulate in Mexico.
“One of the fellows from Nanaimo happened to be there, and he said, 'I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Malcolm is dead,”' Huolt said.
The 33-year-old newlywed from Nanaimo, B.C., was one of five Canadians killed in the explosion at the Grand Riviera Princess Hotel. Six other Canadians were injured in the blast that also killed two Mexicans at the 676-room resort in the city of Playa del Carmen on Sunday morning.
Huolt said her daughter-in-law, Heather Pynten, and the couple's one-year-old daughter should be back in Nanaimo in the next day or two. Huolt plans to meet her in the Vancouver Island city to help plan the funeral.
“Heather is holding up. My granddaughter is with her. They got married on the 10th, Audrey had her first birthday on the 13th and he died on the 14th. It's tragic, it's just a tragic thing,” she said.
Huolt said she spoke to her son via Skype a few days before he left on vacation.
“We were Skyping, and I was talking to my granddaughter, and the last thing I said to him was, 'Malcolm, please be safe. I love you, please be safe, take care of that baby, I don't want anything to ever happen to any one of you.' And he said, 'OK, Mom, I love you,' and that was the last thing I said to him,” she said.
Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said in Montreal that he expects an investigation by the Mexican government to shed more light on the cause of the explosion.
Cannon said the government had been awaiting permission from the families of the dead and injured before releasing names. He said some of the victims were from Ontario and elsewhere in the country but would not be more specific.
Cannon shied away from urging Canadians not to travel to Mexico.
“All I say is that the government of Canada regularly posts advisory information on its website to those who travel to foreign countries,” he said.
“In this case, obviously, the government of Mexico will be doing the analysis, but for all intents and purposes we understand that this is an accident.
“It's an unfortunate accident. There's been loss of life and it is a tragedy. But I am sure that within the next couple of weeks and months, the government of Mexico will be able to shed all of the light on this incident.”
