For Ron Crawley

I don't remember the first time I met Ron, since I was a small child, but I certainly remember the first time we "re-met." I was 18 years old and in Ottawa for my first year of journalism school at Carleton University. My dad had called ahead to let Ron and his wife Col know I was moving to Ottawa.

Ron called my small residence room and invited me out to supper."We'll have Thai food," he said; you could hear his smile down the phone line. I was a picky eater as a child, but when he explained there was peanut sauce in most of the dishes, I was game.

From that first supper on, Ron and Col took me under their wings and showed me the wonders of a medium-sized yet fairly diverse Canadian city. I ate my first Indian and Vietnamese with them; I visited museums alongside them. I learned more about the labour movement and unionism and philosophy at their dinner table than I learned even in my parent's home, where union was a common and friendly word.

Ron and Col gave me my first computer; they lent me books and taught me words and talked endlessly with me about the press and its role in a free and democratic society.

Ron always believed in the goodness of people and in the power of thought, speech and writing. He reinforced my upbringing of looking at the positive side of things. He always made me feel what I had to say was important, even when he was correcting a false assumption or a hyperbolic idea.

And he always had a quick and ready smile.

My life would be a poorer and less interesting one without having known him, and I think of him almost every time I see a picket sign or pick up a set of chopsticks.

The world is a little less bright now that he is no longer in it. I'm so sorry, Col, for your loss. And Dad: I know you loved him and I'm so sorry your good friend is gone. But the people we love never truly die if we continue to remember them.