By this time in the summer, I've sat with Jack many times. On the way to Hanlans or walking.

I say out loud "Hey Jack!" I stop and reflect. With a cig (I quit)/vape. I feel him. I feel like he can see me and we can chat in some way.

This is the first year I haven't seen Jack.
I sit across on the bench, and look at him. I've never actually sat on the bike!

And watch people interacting with him. It's such a joy.

For a few minutes I also think deep thoughts about life. Sometimes in my head I ask him for advice on how to fix my life! 🤣
"What the hell should I do with my life Jack? It's hopeless!" is a common one. 🤣🤣

He's never responded but I think he hears and is trying to say something.

A weird thing this statue does to me.

A beautiful place that brings something out of all of us.
I grieved him intensely even tho I never met him.

I was stunned and shocked he was gone. I was alone that whole summer in a tiny flat in London UK. That was a lonely time.

I wept. I sobbed. As if I lost a close friend.
It was odd bc I wasn't his biggest fan. It took time for me to come around to liking him as a figure. I'm not sure why.

When he was gone it felt like such a hole bc his presence, his voice, was so familiar and powerful for so long.

As if he was literally in your life.
But obviously it was more than familiarty.

I don't shed a tear for news figures or celebrities. I sobbed for days over Jack. He still makes me weepy.

Something inside me loved him. My heart was broken.

He reached us on an intimate level.

Even those of us he never met.
As a gay person I was hyper aware that Jack had our back. That's how my affection for him started to grow.

My warmest loudest applause at Pride Parades was PFLAG and Jack and Olivia.

They were ours. When they came to the Village they were home. Our home was their home.
My friend Doug and I analyzed at length what this photo meant over beer at Woody's.

This edition of Fab Magazine smacked Canada in the face.

We loved him. Because he could do this.

We knew what he was telling us: your cause is always my cause, love is love and 🖕 homophobes.
There will always be the burning questions, what could have been?

I have firm convictions on this.

Jack Layton was going to be Prime Minister of Canada in 2015. That election was his. He would have soared in the key moments that decided it.

Jack would have been PM for pandemic
Jack would have been PM for Trump.

(No matter your political preferences, everyone would agree that would have been a hell of a ride. And something talked about and documented long after we're buried.)
But more importantly, Jack would have been the Prime Minister who ended poverty and homelessness.

He would have taken a huge bite into our unaffordability and housing emergency toward the just society we talk about but never realized.
If you don't believe me then you haven't spent enough quality time with Jack.

Which you can still do any time.

Because I can't see Jack this year, instead I've snuggled up with him.

Today I've been reading his book.
Universal Basic Income would be well on its way or already reality BEFORE Pandemic under Prime Minister Layton.

The debate would be over and settled. We wouldn't still be questioning if human beings deserve a place a live with food and basic dignities of life during a pandemic.
Because Jack understood better than any other leaders at the federal level that poverty and homelessness was not provincial jurisdiction.

It is our national shame.

One that breaks international law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
As Jack explains here, homelessness didn't even exist in Canada at pervasive levels until the 1980s.

Federal, provincial and municipal govts and we collectively as Canadians are to blame.

But it was principally sparked by national policy decisions by the Mulroney government.
Hence we are condemned by the United Nations for our housing, poverty and homelessness crisis, which they classify a "NATIONAL emergency".
AND...for 2020 eyes it jumps off the page like a thunderclap.

Almost as if Jack specifically wrote it for this moment today.

A message for Canadians and Justin Trudeau:
So Jack, sorry I haven't been able to say Hi or sit with you this year yet.

And if I eventually do, I'll be wearing a mask so you might not recognize me from the last time I talked to you at your spot.

These are scary times since then...but...
...as Tommy Douglas said, it's never too late to make a better world.

I think what I loved about you most, besides empathy and compassion, was your relentless optimism:
(Fin)
Note, all quoted exerpts in this thread were from:
You can follow @Mikeggibbs.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: