Photos View photos zoom 
 
 Through his entire life, Jeff Walton Jr. had no idea his father was keeping a secret. 
 
 The 35-year-old learned from police earlier this month that his father, who he knew as Jeff Walton the first — a 69-year-old New Orleans Saints fan living in small-town Oklahoma — is not who his son thought him to be. 
 
 The senior Walton was born Ronald Stan, a Canadian living in the former Township of East Williams, Middlesex County until September 29, 1977, when he was reported missing after a mysterious early-morning barn fire. 
 
 “I’m still trying to put all the puzzle pieces together myself,” said the younger Walton reached on the phone. He and the rest of Stan’s American family, which includes Walton’s stepmom and at least three grandchildren, only found out about his Canadian past this month. 
 
 Provincial police in Ontario pieced together the story of Stan in July, when they reopened the file on his disappearance as part of a routine audit of the case file. Const. Laurie Houghton with the Middlesex County OPP attributed the resolution of the case to modern investigative techniques not available in 1977. 
 
 “I can’t speak to his motives,” said Houghton. “We were able to connect the dots.” 
 
 Stan, who was 32 years old when he disappeared, is considered legally dead in Canada. He was declared deceased by a court in 1986, nearly a decade after his disappearance amid circumstances that still remain murky. Police responded to a fire at a barn near a piece of farmland property owned by Ronald Stan. A witness saw Stan in the area of the barn before the fire and he couldn’t be found afterwards. 
 
 At least one neighbour recalls the serious blaze in 1977. Bert Toonen said his brother Peter was out with Stan the night of the fire. A young man at the time, Toonen was one of many neighbours who helped investigators search the debris. 
 
 “They were my father’s pigs in that barn. We were out the next day combing through the wreckage with the police looking for human remains,” Toonen said. No human remains were found. 
 
 Decades later, Toonen now owns Stan’s former property, land which changed hands several times over the years. He lives down the street from Stan’s uncle Edward Stan, who moved in down the road with his family shortly after the fire. 
 
 Both Toonen and Edward say Stan left behind a wife. Edward says the couple had two children, but that he had little contact with his nephew’s family after Ronald Stan’s disappearance. The Star attempted to reach people believed to be the wife and children of Stan but was unable to verify whether they were his relatives. 
 
 It’s not clear how Stan came to be declared deceased. In Ontario at that time, a family member would have had to make the request through court, but Stan’s legal status was unclear to at least one family member — his uncle Edward did not know he was legally declared dead. In fact he said he knew Stan was alive, because he saw his nephew in 1997: 
 
 “We knew because he came up when his dad died. We saw him then.” 
 
 Edward said he refused to talk to Stan at his father Henry’s funeral, evading the happy-go-lucky nephew he once knew. He knows nothing about Stan’s new life in the United States, except for information gathered from provincial police after they contacted him early this month with Stan’s whereabouts. 
 
 In 2002 the province enacted stricter measures to make it harder to declare someone dead. Prior to the Declarations of Death Act, the court could declare a missing person dead incidentally to another sort of application, said Joshua Eisen, an associate at Toronto law firm Hull and Hull LLP, who deals with wills and estate litigation. 
 
 “(A person) would have to start litigation to get their life insurance . . . or something like that,” Eisen said. “The court could say that this person is dead for the purposes of a life insurance application or maybe to distribute the money in the will. There had to be some reason for it.” 
 
 Today, a spouse, next of kin or any person affected by an order declaring that an individual is dead can apply to the courts to have somebody declared dead under only two circumstances: the person has been missing for seven years or they disappeared in circumstance of peril. 
 
 The consequences of declaring a person dead are very severe, Eisen said; a person declared dead loses all right to their own property. An applicant has to show nobody has heard from the missing, they’ve made reasonable inquiries into the person’s location, they have no reason to believe the missing person is alive and there has to be enough evidence to find that the person’s dead. 
 
 Courts, he said, were always reluctant to grant this sort of release. 
 
 “You really have to go off the map to be declared dead,” said Eisen. 
 
 Jeff Walton Jr. doesn’t blame his father for what happened but is still dealing with the shock of the new information. He declined to discuss the specifics of his father’s flight or any potential motivation. 
 
 Stan, now 69 years old, suffers from vascular dementia and heart disease, his son says. He was in a nursing home when the police made the connection. Stan’s American wife, Debra Proctor, filed for divorce upon hearing the news, said Walton. 
 
 “It’s been tough on me, but he’s still my father. It doesn’t change the man I knew for 35 years,” said Walton. “Hopefully one day he can sit down and write a book and remember all the stuff he’s been through in his life. It’d be a damn good book I’ll tell you that, just from what I’ve heard.” 
 
 The Ontario Provincial Police said there are no charges being laid and the case is now closed. ||||| CTV A 32-year-old man who went missing in 1977 following an Ontario barn fire on the property seen here has been found alive and living in Oklahoma, according to Ontario Provincial Police. 
 
 A Canadian man who was declared dead after vanishing 37 years ago has been found alive and living in Oklahoma. 
 
 Ontario Provincial Police say Ronald Stan, who was 32 when he went missing, was recently discovered living under the name of Jeff Walton after vanishing on Sept. 29, 1977, CTVNews reported. 
 
 Stan was suspected of dying in a barn fire, southwest of Toronto, which left firefighters painstakingly digging through the smoldering remains without any sign of his body. 
 
 "I remember that one quite well because we dug through dead pigs and so-on with our boots on, and had done our very best to find human remains," retired firefighter Jim Walsh told CTVNews. "And there was none in that barn." 
 
 CTV Retired firefighter Jim Walsh, pictured right, recently recalled sifting through the remains of the burned barn for Ronald Stan's body in September 1977 without any luck. 
 
 Nearly a decade later, after finding no trace of the missing man, an Ontario court declared him dead in 1986. 
 
 Fast forward to last July, authorities say a routine audit of his mysterious disappearance linked Stan to a 69-year-old man living more than 1,000 miles south. That man was positively identified as Stan. Police did not identify where in Oklahoma he was found. 
 
 "I can't speak to his motives," Const. Laurie Houghton with the Middlesex County Ontario Provincial Police told The Star of Stan's possible reason for disappearing. 
 
 CTV Ontario Provincial Police Middlesex County OPP Const. Laurie Houghton, pictured, said that charges are not expected to be filed against Stan, who has been living under the name of Jeff Walton. 
 
 Houghton said his family has been informed of his discovery and that he is not facing criminal charges in Canada. 
 
 As for how they found him this time around, she credited new technology for cracking the case. 
 
 "There's a lot that's available to us now for investigative tools that wasn't available to us back in 1977. As a result, we were able to connect the dots, essentially, and lead us to the state of Oklahoma," she told The Star.
– In 1977, a man went missing after a barn fire in Ontario; in 1986, with no sign of him, authorities declared Ronald Stan dead. Turns out they were wrong: He has now turned up again after decades, and he's living in Oklahoma, CTV reports. Stan went missing at age 32. He's now known as Jeff Walton, and he's 69, CTV notes. Police say they can't offer information as to why he went missing. "I’m still trying to put all the puzzle pieces together myself," Walton's son, Jeff Jr., tells the Toronto Star. Walton Jr. learned of his father's previous identity this month from police; his stepmother hadn't known, either. One uncle in Canada, however, does appear to have seen Stan in 1997: "He came up when his dad died," the uncle says. How police found him isn't entirely clear; the case was reopened in a routine audit, the Star notes, and new police methods solved it. "There's a lot that's available to us now for investigative tools that wasn't available to us back in 1977. As a result, we were able to connect the dots, essentially, and lead us to the state of Oklahoma," an officer tells that paper, per the New York Daily News. "It’s been tough on me, but he’s still my father," says the son of Walter/Stan. "It doesn’t change the man I knew for 35 years." No criminal charges are expected. (Elsewhere, police suspect a champion boat racer faked his own death.)