For Brian, Chris, Drew, Ed, Ed, Barry, Ron, Steve and of course, my dad.

On the afternoon of October 20th, 2007 I was playing with my two kids in the family of our rented house in Calgary’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood.  My parents called and what they had to say sent my head spinning.

Growing up in Hay River, my first paying job (age 11 or 12) was working for a man I’d met through my parent’s church.  Ed ran Hay River Disposals, the local garbage collection operation, and my job was to accompany Ed in the garbage truck on long-weekend holidays so that they didn’t fall behind the rest of the week and his guys still got their long weekend.  It was often cold and smelly and when it wasn’t it was hot and smelly.  I loved that job.  I was fascinated by the truck’s compactor, a big steel door that would scoop down and drag the load of trash up into it’s belly.  I liked being able to break and crush things with an oversized power tool.  Most of all, I liked Ed.  Ed was kind, friendly and open, always smiling.  Ed continued to be a man I looked up to.  A man I respected and admired and as I grew up and had a family of my own, he was someone that I wanted to introduce to my family.  I wanted him to know that despite everything, I’d turned out all right.  Well, maybe not all right, but not all wrong.

I didn’t get to do that.  My parents had called to pass on that my childhood mentor Ed had been murdered, one of two innocent bystanders killed in the Surrey 6 slaying.  Even today I can’t find the words to express the dichotomy of Ed being murdered in cold blood.

After returning from Ed’s funeral, I promised myself that I’d write a letter to a handful of the men that had helped to mould and shape me as a young man.  I wanted to tell these people that they’d had an impact and left an impression, that they mattered to me irrespective of the divergence of our lives.  Each of them, in their own way, as individual father figures backstopping the lessons of my own father with theirs.

That was 5 years ago.  I chickened out and lost my nerve.  Tonight, my parents called again.  “Drew died today” my mother sobbed, dad not able to get the words out.  I waited too long.

Gentlemen,

Though we have not spoken in many years, I want you to know.  Your presence in my life, some as far back as I can remember, was not trivial nor without legacy.  You have all left your individual, indelible marks.  You have given me a reference, a standard by which to measure and gauge my own actions.  Easily one of the most important tools in the toolbox of life.  When I think of what it means to be a man, it isn’t Hollywood that fills in the blanks, it is you.  Honesty, integrity, warmth, perseverance, hard-working, capable, reasoned, humorous, forgiving, inclusive, giving, caring…  A man’s man, father, husband.

Thank you.

Andrew