A Montreal man who says he was planning to marry one of the victims in the Kingston, Ont., canal deaths is dismissing the idea she was killed because of a former relationship.

Hussain Hyderi says he met Zainab Shafia two years ago when she moved to Canada with her family.

The 19-year-old woman was the eldest of three sisters found dead in a submerged vehicle at the Kingston Mills locks last month. Her father's first wife was also found in the car.

Her father Mohammad Shafia, her mother Tooba Mohammad Yahya and her brother Hamed Shafial face first-degree murder charges in their deaths.

Hyderi, 27, said he had been dating Shafia since mid-May, after Shafia broke off plans to marry a Pakistani man.

"She realized that her life would be ... miserable if she married that guy, because the guy doesn't do anything for a living," Hyderi told CBC News in an interview.

Rejects notion of honour killing

Relatives in Europe had told CBC News they thought the death might have been an honour killing because her father was upset about that relationship.

Hyderi rejects that notion, saying Zainab's father had told her she could marry the Pakistani man if that's what she wanted.

But she didn't want to, Hyderi said, because he and she had fallen in love.

They were going to get engaged after she returned home from Kingston, he said.

Mohammad Shafia was fine with the idea, Hyderi said, although the father had expressed a desire to see his daughter marry a cousin in Afghanistan.

Hyderi said he doesn't believe her death was an honour killing.

"[But] If she was going to say yes to her cousin I don't know what would have happened," he said.