Rob Ford
May 28, 1969 – March 22, 2016
I do not know a lot about Rob Ford. I know he was mayor of Toronto from 2010 to 2014. I know he had addiction problems. I know he died prematurely from cancer. I know his brother, Doug Ford, is currently the Premier of Ontario.
I am including Rob Ford in my In Memoriam section because I think he was the most embarrassing Canadian politician during my lifetime.
Muhammad Ali
January 17, 1942 - June 3, 2016
Muhammad Ali was my hero.
I first became aware of Cassius Clay in the early 1960s, soon after he began his career as a professional boxer. There was something about him, an air, an attitude, a presence, that I surely did not understand very deeply as a young teenager. But he inspired me, perhaps because of his anti-establishment, rebellious spirit.
His manner quickly earned a nickname, “The Louisville Lip”, which suited him well. My mother did not like him, because of his big mouth, she said. Looking back, there was some connection between his rebellion and mine, and some connection between the generation gap between me and my parents and the wide gap between my generation and our parents.
I was aware of Clay becoming a Muslim, but did not understand its significance at the time. It would be decades later that I first learned that about ten percent of imported black slaves from Africa were Muslims. Clay and others were honouring the roots of some of their black brothers. Even today this history is not widely known. It adds an element of irony to current American Islamophobia.
I remember the controversy of the name change from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali. I was impressed by the respect shown by sportscasters Howard Cosell who was one of the first to use the new name. Today I wonder how many Millennials would be able to correctly identify Cassius Clay.
I cannot separate in my mind what I knew about Ali at the time and what I learned later. There have been so many stories and documentaries about him over the years that have shaped my views. My admiration for him has steadily grown.
He is deserving of his status as my hero for many reasons. High on the list is his refusal to serve his country in the Vietnam War. Although unpopular with many at the time, history has completely vindicated his stance. In the short term he paid a big price. In the long term he became one of the great influencers of the twentieth century.
As I write this in 2021, I have uncovered an unsolvable mystery. There is an irreconcilable contradiction between my memory and recorded historical facts. It is now my own memory, which is very strong and clear, that I doubt.
My memory tells me that I, along with two friends, was at the Kinsmen Fieldhouse in Edmonton on a Friday evening in October, 1974 to see the The Rumble in the Jungle, the boxing match between challenger Muhammad Ali and champion George Foreman. At the time we were members of a cult that observed the seventh day sabbath which began a sunset on Friday. We were choosing to break God’s Law, so great was our desire to see this fight. The next day, our sin was mentioned from the pulpit at church services, a memory which Pat confirms. But history and the calendar tell a different story. The fight occurred in Zaire on Wednesday, October 30, 1974 and was shown on pay-per-view closed-circuit theatre TV on Tuesday, October 29, 1974 in North America.
I watched the fight live and I have watched replays many times. The fight exceeded the buildup and has a secure place in history. Ali won against the odds and made famous his rope-a-dope tactic. The event was captured in a documentary made decades later entitled When We were Kings, which I have seen. And all of this lives on in my unexplainable, distorted memory.
I also vividly remember the surprise appearance of Muhammad Ali as the final torchbearer during the opening ceremony of the summer olympics in Atlanta in 1996. By this time of his life, Ali was visibly shaking due to the impact of Parkinson’s disease. It was an inspiring moment which, if my unreliable memory is correct, I watched on live TV.
Heroes need not be perfect. Ali married four times and had nine children, some out of wedlock. His daughter, Laila, became a professional boxer and I saw a few of her bouts on TV and echos of her father.
Some of my favorite Ali quotes:
I shook up the world.
I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.
I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong. No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn't matter which color does the hating. It's just plain wrong.
Gordie Howe
March 31, 1928 – June 10, 2016
We are shaped by the culture we live in. Consequently, as a boy growing up in rural Nova Scotia, I was a hockey fan at the time when there were only six teams in the National Hockey League. Almost every boy, and many girls, had their team that they cheered for. The most popular team was the Toronto Maple Leafs followed by the Montreal Canadiens, the only two Canadian teams. But I was a Detroit Red Wings fan but I have no clue why.
I was a fan of Gordie Howe, one of the superstars of his era, who played for the Red Wings. I followed his whole career which turned out to be exceptionally long. He went to the newly formed World Hockey Association. He played in the NHL again with the Hartford Whalers. Finally he retired at age 52, the oldest player ever.
Alvin Toffler
October 4, 1928 – June 27, 2016
Some books I read had a lasting impression on me. I read Future Shock by Alvin Toffler sometime in the early 1970s when the paperback edition was published. I have always been interested in the future. I have long been aware of the concept of information overload. Now, fifty years after Future Shock, the pace of change still continues to accelerate. And we have not yet experienced the potentially revolutionary impact of artificial intelligence.
Leonard Cohen
September 21, 1934 – November 7, 2016
I do not know a lot about Leonard Cohen. I know he was a great Canadian singer-songwriter and poet. I know he was a sabbath keeping Jew with a considerable interest in Buddhism. I know he wrote Hallelujah, one of my favorite songs. I especially like the song as sung by k. d. lang.
There was a darkness about him and more than a little wisdom and insight. A month after he died I honoured his life by spending a couple of hours reading his lyrics and listening to his songs. But, mainly, I am including him in my In Memoriam section because of two lines he wrote, lines that are often in my stream of consciousness.
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in