It has been over five years since Murray Wood's two children left their home in Canada with his Japanese ex-wife for a supposed visit with their ill grandfather in Japan.
But what he believed to be a short trip was actually the beginning of the end for his time as a father. The children have not set foot in Canada since then.
Wood is a so-called left-behind parent in an international divorce due to an apparent violation of the 1980 Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which aims to protect children from being wrongfully taken out of their country of "habitual residence" by a parent. Japan is not a party to the treaty.