Remembering Jack

My first encounter with the optimism of Jack Layton was over 20 years ago, around 1990, when I was managing Innstead, a housing co-op in the east end of Toronto. We had just purchased a small apartment building to convert to social housing, and I had the crazy idea of turning the adjacent vacant rail side lot into an ecology park. I faxed a letter to the Mayor, all the councillors, and the various city department heads. I received one response: Jack, on the answering machine. I remember his enthusiastic first words: "What a wonderful idea!" All of sudden what felt like a solitary and somewhat quixotic quest became something I was doing in solidarity with at least one other person who believed in ecological restoration.

It was over a decade later that I met Jack again. Web Networks had just taken over managing ndp.ca, and we had set up the NDP's first content management and e-commerce system, and delivered a new design on a tight budget  for the party's leadership campaign in which Jack was elected leader. We then began working on a new site, Web Networks' first using the Drupal system. I saw Jack in a subway car at Spadina station, and, incredibly, he recognized me, called me by name, and said, "Are you going to create a killer website for us?", grinning, with that twinkle in his eye.

Last night, a few hours before he died, I had a dream, in which Jack and I were discussing the old days when Alexa McDonough was leader, and I would meet with her party staff, pitching them on all the ways they could leverage the Internet to build support for the NDP. They did not have the money or the manpower to do much. In the dream, Jack laughed, but seemed restless, like he had to go. If he was visiting the trapline of all the people in the world who he supported and touched positively, he was on a long journey indeed.