Personalities – Page 2 – My Second Running Life

Remembering Jerome Drayton

Recently, I wrote a piece about several of my sporting heroes. To keep the piece to a reasonable length, I didn’t comment on another man who had certainly earned a place on my list. In fact, he had been one of my personal heroes for years. That man is Jerome Drayton. In light of his sudden passing on February 10 at the age of 80, I’m regretting that decision. It seems appropriate to talk about him now, and the impact he had on me.

Much has been written about Drayton. His personal story is one of strength and resilience. He was born in Germany to Russian-Ukranian parents, just as the war was coming to an end. His parents divorced, and he emigrated to Canada with his mother in 1956. His name at birth was Peter Buniak, and while we hear various reasons for his change of name, it was clearly his way of putting distance between his past in Europe and his future life in Canada.

He started running in high school in Toronto and found early success. More accurately, he earned it. His results speak volumes about his work ethic. I can start with his astounding mileage totals. He was a pure amateur, doing 200-mile weeks while working full-time. Mere mortals struggle to reach a quarter of that.

While I was discovering athletics in the mid-1970s, Drayton was already in the top echelon of the sport. I never met him, but I followed his exploits closely. Here’s some of what I wrote about him in Stroke of Luck:

“Coincidentally, the world around us was discovering running at the same time we were. The mid- to late-1970s marked the beginning of what is now called the running boom. Frank Shorter’s win in the 1972 Olympic Marathon for the United States is often cited as the beginning of the boom, but I wonder how strongly that event resonated in Canada. If we were following any world class distance runners, it was more likely to be the top Canadian, Jerome Drayton, or even some of the top British runners like Ron Hill, rather than the celebrated American.”

Drayton’s running resume is stellar. In an era when distance running was still seen as a fringe sport, Drayton fit the stereotype of the lone, somewhat aloof, character. Obituaries and tributes describe his single-mindedness and determination.

In my book, I described Drayton as an enigma, given his preference for running in dark aviator shades and a tendency to front-run against his toughest competitors. Perhaps fitting that persona, Drayton never seemed to say much. He let his running speak for itself.

Consider this: long before Boston assumed the title of “world’s premier marathon”, the Fukuoka Marathon in Japan was at the pinnacle of the sport. Entry was by invitation only. Drayton won it, THREE TIMES, in 1969, 1975 and 1976. What about Boston? Well, he won that too, in 1977. He was the last Canadian man to do so.

Drayton in the 1976 Fukuoka Marathon (Photo from Canadian Running, 2013)

Speaking of Boston, I suppose we could add “irascible” to the list of words describing Drayton. Apparently, he wasn’t the most gracious winner. Rather, he took the opportunity to point out that he had just about been mugged in the early going, and that his victory had nearly been sabotaged by the lack of water stations. Hearing this story only made me admire him more. Any of us who have run the race can thank Drayton for dragging the BAA into the modern era.

I have to mention the most durable of Drayton’s achievements, his Canadian marathon record. He set the record (2:10:08) in the 1975 Fukuoka Marathon, and it stood for an incredible 43 years until Cam Levins broke it in the 2018 Toronto Waterfront Marathon.

There was a Hamilton connection too, which cemented Drayton’s place as one of my running heroes. Here’s another passage from my book, where I talked about his victories in the Around the Bay Race:

“The history of the Boston Marathon is intertwined with that other famous race, Hamilton’s own Around the Bay Race. Both races were first contested in the 1890s. Many icons of distance running, including some legendary Canadians, had competed in both events. The lists of past winners in Boston and Hamilton include many names that I recognized, even idolized. There was Jerome Drayton, the top Canadian marathoner, the national marathon record holder, and the 1977 Boston winner. He was also a two-time winner of the Bay Race, in 1973 and 1974.”

Drayton, alone in the lead at ATB (Photo from Hamilton Archives)

In the 1970s, finding any athletics news at all was tough. I scoured a lot of newspapers. Despite the sport’s relatively low profile, Drayton stood tall. His star shone brightly until his retirement in the early 1980s. When his racing days were behind him, Drayton was a reclusive role model. He appeared from time to time in interviews… this one in Canadian Running Magazine from 2009 is excellent… and when his Canadian record was finally beaten, he was gracious. He expressed surprise that it had taken so long.

In his later years, Drayton took on advisory roles with government sports agencies. He shunned publicity and lived a modest life in Toronto. Some stories mentioned his struggles with arthritis, which may have contributed to his unexpected death. The news reports I’ve read suggest his death came during knee surgery. Sadly ironic, for a man whose legs had carried him to the top of the marathon world half a century earlier.

Jerome Drayton was a true sporting legend, whose place in Canadian sporting history won’t easily be matched.

Until next time, be well and (emulating Drayton) BE FAST!

Lessons from Sporting Legends

Do you have any sporting heroes? Maybe you do, or maybe you think the idea of sporting heroes is quaint and outdated. Given the commercialization of sports, I can certainly understand this view. I do have several sporting heroes, but maybe the best way to explain this is to say that there are people I have looked up to throughout my life. Some of them happen to have been great athletes.

Bobby Orr

It was Sunday, May 10, 1970. Game four of the Stanley Cup finals. Overtime. One brilliant play was about to etch itself in my brain forever. Here’s what I wrote about that moment in my book, Stroke of Luck:

So it was that in May 1970, as an impressionable nine-year-old, I was watching game four of the Stanley Cup finals, between the Boston Bruins and the St. Louis Blues. It was less than a minute into overtime. Bobby Orr rushed the St. Louis net and took a pass from Derek Sanderson, who was behind the goal line. As Orr directed his shot into the net, to win the game and the Cup for the Bruins, I was in awe. I remember, like it was yesterday, Orr’s flying celebration of his goal. I was an instant fan of the Bruins, and I had found my first real sports hero in this young, talented defenseman.

Ray Lussier’s photograph of Orr flying through the air is one of the most iconic pictures in sports history. As Orr was half-tripped and half-jumped, he had already begun celebrating his cup-winning overtime goal. But here’s the thing: I don’t even need the photograph. I can play the whole video in perfect detail in my mind.

Orr did more in his short career than most players could dream of. His ability to control a game was unmatched. I believe he was the best defenseman to ever play the game. And even today, I get goosebumps if I watch highlight videos of his end-to-end rushes. It’s a rare player who can make the best in the world look ordinary, but Orr did it to opponents game after game. And yet, he never grandstanded after scoring a goal. In interviews, he was quiet, almost shy. He let his ability speak for itself.

I followed Orr’s career from beginning to end. His wonky knees were his undoing, drastically shortening his career. I wonder how different things might have been had Orr played a generation later, given that surgical repair of torn ligaments is now routine. Instead, the last images of him (in a Chicago Blackhawks jersey, no less), struggling to execute moves that would have been routine just a few years earlier, are heartbreaking.

In my opinion, a worthy sporting hero can inspire us even in difficult circumstances, and beyond the field of play. Orr has been the perfect role model: humble in victory and accepting of defeat. We should all strive to emulate his example.

Sebastian Coe

I hinted at the depth of my admiration for Seb Coe in a brief passage when telling my own story:

My appreciation and love of athletics grew. I followed all the results for my latest heroes, the middle-distance stars Sebastian Coe and Eamonn Coghlan. Coe became a global sensation when he set three brilliant world records on the track, all within six weeks in the summer of 1979. But it was the way he ran, with elegance and effortless power—with passion—that I admired most.

My dilemma when writing my book was whether I should say more about this gifted and charismatic runner, and the impact he had on me, or keep it brief to move the story along. I opted for brevity, but I feel I should add to what I wrote.

For context, in the summer of 1979, I was well on my own path. I had just finished my first year of engineering. I was dedicated to athletics, having participated in cross country and track in high school for several years.

Coe seemed to emerge on the scene out of nowhere. Of course, we didn’t have instant news and 24-hour coverage then. The athletics world held its collective breath as this slight, supremely talented 22-year-old Brit smashed three major world records in rapid succession. Here’s a synopsis:

July 5, Oslo: Coe shattered Alberto Juantorena’s world 800m record at the Bislett Games, running 1:42.33.
July 17, Oslo: In the Golden Mile, Coe broke John Walker’s record in 3:48.95 against a world-class field.
August 15, Zurich: At the Weltklasse meet, Coe broke Filbert Bayi’s 1500m world record in 3:32.03.

World record in the Golden Mile, July 1979 (Getty Images)

I remember scouring the newspapers for any information on Coe and his races. His records all came within a few weeks of my birthday, so it was as if he was gifting me with these performances. I felt I was somehow a part of his epic summer. In fact, I was so taken by Coe’s streak that I decided to try out for the university athletics team when the school year started in September. (Sadly, my performances fell so far short of his that my experiment ended quickly.)

Since the summer of 1979, Coe has had a full and productive career. He won two consecutive Olympic 1500m gold medals. He went on to lead the 2012 London Olympic Games committee, and he is the current president of the IAAF. From my perspective, Coe has always carried himself with that same passion and dignity that set him apart on the track. I’ve admired him for decades, both in my athletic and personal pursuits. I considered him a role model 45 years ago, and I still do.

Eamonn Coghlan

In my view, Eamonn Coghlan is underrated compared to some other big names in athletics. It turns out I have a couple of tenuous connections to this great middle-distance runner. Coghlan was born in Drimnagh, Ireland, a suburb of Dublin. Drimnagh is a short distance from Monasterevin, the hometown of my paternal ancestors. I wrote about Coghlan in my book:

Coghlan’s specialty was the indoor mile. He had earned the nickname “Chairman of the Boards” due to his ability to perform well on tight, wooden indoor tracks. Deb humoured me for an evening in February 1981 at the Toronto Star Indoor Games, with its temporary track set up in Maple Leaf Gardens. I had run there as a schoolboy a few years earlier. We watched Coghlan win the mile in 3:55, an astounding achievement considering the quality of that track. I still have a black and white photograph that I snapped as he jogged around the track for his victory lap.

I found that picture as I was sorting through some old files the other day. It took me right back into Maple Leaf Gardens on that cold February night.

The Chairman of the Boards takes his victory lap (Toronto, February 1981)

As a mature athlete, I’ve always been most impressed by Coghlan’s consistency. It would be enough to say that he broke the 4-minute mile 83 times, but he did so much more. He dominated indoor meets, where tight turns are a handicap as compared to outdoor racing. He ran the first sub-3:50 mile indoors (February 1983), and he was the first man over 40 to break 4 minutes for the mile (February 1994). Quite a career!

Coghlan’s competitive track career spanned 20 years. Like Coe, he has had a fruitful career after athletics. He works as a coach and served as a senator in the Irish parliament from 2011 to 2016.

Wrapping Up

I’ve highlighted some of the lessons that I’ve learned from watching these three outstanding athletes. It confirms for me that great sportsmen (or should I say great people?) still have the power to inspire greatness in all of us.

Although it extends an already long post, I will add a few words about sources. Stephen Brunt’s excellent book, Searching for Bobby Orr, is a well-researched and eloquent biography that puts Orr’s career and life in the context of a sport that was changing dramatically. There is a lot of material available on Coe, including his own books. I enjoyed The Perfect Distance by Pat Butcher, which delves into the rivalry between Coe and another talented British middle-distance man, Steve Ovett. As for Coghlan, I relied on an excellent piece by John Cobley, on his Racing Past website. Cobley’s piece cites Coghlan’s autobiography, Chairman of the Boards, which is unfortunately out of print.

Until next time, be well and BE FAST! Happy New Year to all.

A Tribute to Gerard Rejskind

I don’t have hard rules for the topics on this blog, and there are times when I feel I need to write about something of importance to me. Or someone. This is one of those times.

Gerard Rejskind passed away a year ago to the day that I’m writing these words. I suspected something may have happened to him. As I’ve done occasionally if I’m unsure about someone’s personal situation, I reluctantly typed his name and “obituary” into Google. I was right… he died peacefully in Montreal in December 2023 after a short illness.

So who was Gerard?

It would not be true to say he was a friend. But as I wrote in a similar tribute piece almost two years ago, it is possible in our highly connected world to feel close to someone even if you’ve only spoken to them a few times on the phone. Through his writing, I came to know Gerard and understand him quite well.

Gerard wrote with passion, and he was the driving force behind an independent audio publication (UHF Magazine) that had a small but dedicated following. Through his reviews of audio equipment and recorded music, Gerard influenced many people, including me.

Let me first make a connection, between a subject that I do post about on this site… photography… and music. It isn’t a stretch to say that both these art forms have much in common. They are subjective; that is, they are things that cannot be quantified. If done well, they evoke an emotional response in us. And at their best, they are timeless.

When I found out that Gerard had passed away, I thought about the many ways he had influenced me over more than twenty years. Initially, I had been looking to upgrade my entry-level Sony CD player, a tinny-sounding thing. A colleague lent me a few back issues of UHF, and I was immediately hooked.

UHF (now defunct) was a publication unlike anything else I’d seen. With a modest budget and a small crew, Gerard managed to produce a magazine that bettered any of the big, commercial publications. It did so with a rare offering: totally honest reviews. There were none of the filtered, biased reviews that I read elsewhere. My favourite feature was a short, subjective paragraph from each of the review panelists about a particular piece of gear. This was invaluable for someone like me, who was new to the hobby.

Besides the magazine, Gerard also wrote a couple of books about “hi-fi”. Again, in plain language, he explained what the equipment did (or should do) and how it ought to be designed. This hit a chord with my engineering sensibilities. I found myself coming back to these books time and time again.

My wife will attest that I dropped everything when the latest print issue of UHF showed up in the mail. Because of their shoestring operation, the frequency of publication was, shall I say, variable. Gerard kept UHF going through COVID and his own health challenges. Those things only increased the appeal of the enterprise. I read every word of every issue, and I would save Gerard’s editorial page on the inside of the back cover until last. There, he would offer another nugget of audio wisdom, in his usual style… self-effacing, but with the authority he had earned over a lifetime of experience.

I’ve bought quite a lot of audio equipment and recorded music since I first encountered Gerard and UHF. In all that time, I wouldn’t think about buying anything unless I had checked to see if Gerard had reviewed the gear in question. If he liked it, that was good enough for me. If he really liked an item, he would become a distributor, which said a lot about his motivation. It was also quite convenient. I can honestly say he never steered me wrong.

Beyond all that, he made sure I and his other readers became more self-sufficient, by writing frequent articles and opinion pieces that educated us. In fact, the last edition of UHF, the 101st, consists of a series of introductory “101” pieces (in the usual nomenclature of first-year university courses) on various audio gear. It seems a fitting legacy to Gerard. The final paragraph of his last “State of the Art” piece is worth repeating here:

“The final rule is to do what we do: take notes, with details on
what you liked and what you didn’t. Concentrate on the music,
which is the purpose of the system in the first place.”

Gerard was a rare person: an honest businessman; a knowledgeable and generous resource; and above all, a gentleman. He will be missed.

Now I think I will go and put on a record and re-read some of his pieces.

Carmela Kelly (1931-2024)

My mother passed away on July 6, 2024. The world was a better place while she was in it. Now comes the tough part.

Here’s some text from her obituary, which was published in today’s Hamilton Spectator.

With heavy hearts, we announce the passing of Carmela Mary Kelly (née Celi) in her 93rd year. Carm’s birth in a house on MacNab Street was made more joyous to her parents Giuseppe and Rosa Celi by the unexpected arrival of a twin sister, Concetta (Connie), who survives her. She is also survived by a brother, Anthony, and predeceased by a sister, Mary. Carm married the late Kenneth Kelly in 1958, and they had four children. Carm’s grandchildren … were a constant source of joy. Birthdays and holidays were better (and livelier) when celebrated at Gramma’s house, her home for many years. Carm was an avid crossword solver, a keen knitter, and an enthusiastic Tiger-Cats supporter. She enjoyed these activities most from her favourite pink chair. Her cookie tins were never empty, and her spaghetti & meatballs were legendary. She had an eye for fashion, and for years she enjoyed watching the Oscars. Carm was dedicated to her family, for whom she made countless sacrifices. Her generous spirit enriched many lives. Carm found great comfort in her faith, and she faced life’s many challenges with grace. We will struggle to deal with the loss of our beloved mother, grandmother, sister and friend. …

Carmela Mary Kelly (1931 – 2024) Photo: Shelley K

I wrote quite a bit about my mother in Stroke of Luck, and there’s a good reason for that. She was an inspiration. By doing nothing more than being herself, she made the lives of her family, friends, coworkers and neighbours better. That is quite a legacy.

My mother’s eyes are unmistakable in photographs from her youth. Her shy smile hints at her quiet, introverted personality, and tells the story of her growing up during the Depression and the Second World War. She worked as a secretary at Stelco for a while after high school but put aside her own ambitions once she was married. Years later, when we were all grown, she would take a job as a receptionist at a long-term care facility. She soon became indispensable to the staff and residents there. Of course, we knew that would happen because she already was indispensable to us. It was a small step, and one that let her regain some of the self-confidence that had been eroded by too much time and too much worrying about other people.

Mom has handled difficult times with grace and resilience, and she has faced more than her fair share of difficult times. Pain and grief entered our lives when I was in my early teens. This happened in two separate but related ways. At least they are related in my mind. What I know is that nothing was ever quite the same afterwards, and nothing could ever be taken for granted again. Had we crossed some kind of a dividing line, a transition from the innocence of youth to whatever was to come next? I’m not sure. As for my mother, I never heard her complain or shirk from what she had already accepted as her duty. Given her upbringing, I suspect she had never taken anything for granted as it was.

Goodbye mom. We will miss you terribly. May God bless you and welcome you.

Homage to GAP 1.0

Today’s run was just what I needed.

I had a late evening return flight from Ontario yesterday, so I was feeling a bit out of sorts as I parked next to the Glenmore Athletic Park (GAP) track. A high school track meet was in full swing. I watched from trackside for a few minutes, absorbing waves of energy and hearing the screams of hundreds of students as they cheered on their teammates. It motivated me to get going on my short and overdue run.

I’d been thinking for some time about a homage post to the GAP track. I should say the original GAP track (GAP 1.0), because a spiffy new facility is being constructed by CANA, just a short distance away. I have a lot of criticism for decisions coming out of Calgary city hall but this isn’t one of them. I can’t wait for the new facility to be finished.

The grandstands have been taken down and moved to the new track. The brilliant blue of the new surface looks magnificent and oh so ready for spiked shoes. Crews are working on the finishing touches, like landscaping. It will soon be the dawn of an exciting new era in track and field in Calgary.

It seems timely to say a few words about GAP 1.0. I’ll be honest. The place is definitely looking worse for wear. Chunks of Lane 1 are crumbling into the infield. Patches and cracks are plentiful, thanks to our winter freeze-thaw cycles. The spotting booth on the back straight has been taken over by pigeons.

I did a little research and found out that GAP 1.0 was built in 1962-63. It’s just a couple of years younger than me. No wonder it has cracks and wrinkles!

Despite these blemishes, the track has also been the site of countless track meets, interval workouts and road race finishes. I’ve personally done thousands of laps of the track, in all sorts of weather. And that’s a good segue to the fact that the Calgary running community has been second to none when it comes to keeping a lane or two of GAP 1.0 open through the winter months. All it takes is willpower and a lot of shovels, as demonstrated in this shot from October 2023.

Here’s a shot of an interval session from late March. It was one of those Calgary spring evenings when we started with water in the far corner and ended with sheet ice. No one complained when we decided to cut things short.

Or how about a photo from the 2019 Stampede Road Race? The park was a beehive of activity that morning, with lots of racing action and a pancake breakfast as our reward.

A recent track racing milestone got me thinking nostalgically about GAP 1.0. It was on May 6, 2024, the seventieth anniversary of Roger Bannister’s four-minute mile breakthrough on the Iffley Road track in Oxford, England.

It seemed fitting to make a brief pilgrimage, in pouring rain, to run four ceremonial laps in honour of this great achievement. After all, the GAP track is only 10 years younger than Bannister’s record. I pointed out the significance of the day to a young athlete who had just finished his track workout. He gave me a polite but puzzled smile. I secretly wished for him to do the same on the hundredth anniversary in 2054, running his commemorative laps on the new track.

In closing, I have many fond memories of running on the GAP 1.0 track. I don’t know what lies ahead, but if they do tear it down I’ll miss that familiar red surface, flaws and all. For years, it has been a great venue and meeting place for runners. It’s one of my favourite spots in the city.

So here’s to a good run for a fine old facility! And here’s to GAP 2.0… can’t wait to try out “big blue”.

Until next time, be well and BE FAST!

My Top 5 Books About Runners

Marathon Man, Bill Rodgers & Matthew Shepatin

Bill Rodgers was an unlikely sporting hero. His reputation as a flighty drifter stands in contrast to his intensely competitive racing personality. As we learn more about the man, we can understand this contrast and see how Rodgers progressed to the peak of the marathoning world.

I found his mile-by-mile account of the 1975 Boston Marathon—Rodgers’ breakout race and the first of his four Boston victories—to be worth the price of the book.

Marathon Man is full of motivation for amateur runners, and I highly recommend it.

In Search of Al Howie, Jared Beasley

Al Howie was an enigma. He was a troubled loner, who thought nothing of running thousands of kilometres just to compete in a race, only to turn around and run home. His 1991 record for the fastest run across Canada (72 days) stood for decades until it was broken in 2022 by local legend, Dave Proctor.

While Beasley’s book sheds some light on what drove Howie, we are in many ways left to come to our own conclusions about the man. And that’s fine.

I found the book helped me to sort out what running really means to me, and that’s why I recommend you read In Search of Al Howie for yourself.

The Perfect Mile, Neal Bascomb

All of us who enjoy running owe a debt to the three talented men who chased the four-minute mile in the early 1950s. Roger Bannister, a Brit, finally broke the barrier in 1954. And like us, he was a pure amateur. He juggled athletics training with medical studies and did groundbreaking research into the science behind aerobic exercise.

In my opinion, he paved the way for us to enjoy the sport as we do today.

What you may not know is that there was worldwide interest in the rivalry between Bannister, the Australian John Landy, and the American Wes Santee. Bascomb’s superb book, The Perfect Mile, brings this important piece of running history to life. Highly recommended!

Born to Run, Chris McDougall

This book caused quite a stir when it came out in 2010. It uncovered a whole new world of distance running, in the remote part of Mexico that is home to the fascinating Tarahumara people. Reading about their unbelievable feats of endurance left me in awe.

I was also intrigued by the mysterious American loner, Caballo Blanco, who lived and ran in the same mountain region.

The author’s own experience in a fifty-mile trail race leads him to investigate why human physiology makes us ideally suited to distance running.

These threads are woven together to make Born to Run a memorable read. See if you agree.

Duel in the Sun, John Brant

This is the story of one of the great rivalries in distance running, and possibly the most exciting Boston Marathon finish of all time.

The clash between Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardsley in 1982 has all the elements of a thriller: the brash young star and the workmanlike veteran, battling each other to the finish on a scorching day in Boston. Neither runner was ever the same again.

Their compelling personal stories are told in real-time as they run from Hopkinton to Boylston Street. Duel in the Sun is a must-read for anyone who has run that famous stretch of road. Or aspires to.

Leicaphilia Loses its Creative Force

Tim Vanderweert passed away in early January. I need to say a few words about him, and the impact he had on me. In this digital world, it seems a stretch to say Tim was a friend because I never met him. I only knew him through his online presence and a bit of interaction we had through his blog, Leicaphilia. One thing is certain – I wasn’t the only person who was influenced by Tim.

It’s funny how things go sometimes. About five years ago, I was putting my life back together after a medical episode that left me wondering what my future would look like. Competitive running, which had been a constant presence in my life for more than four decades, looked like it might be taken away forever. I wasn’t sure I could cope with that prospect.

I had always had a passing interest in photography, but to be fair, it had never gone beyond a teenager’s early fascination with the gear and amateurish attempts to emulate the great landscape photographer, Ansel Adams. Boxes of family snapshots, as great as they are, attest to the fact that I focused more on quantity than quality. And that was fine, as I had limited time for hobbies, for all the usual reasons.

Fast forward to 2017. Adrift after a lengthy hospital stay and amid much uncertainty, I picked up my old Canon AT-1–that’s a totally manual film camera by the way–and started carrying it with me on my slow recovery walks around the neighbourhood. For years, I had cruised through the same streets at a faster pace – apparently fast enough that I hadn’t seen things that were right in front of my eyes.

My interest in photography was being rekindled but I was rusty. So rusty that I had missed the whole transition to digital photography, which had made film cameras obsolete. At least that was the conventional wisdom.

And then I discovered Leicaphilia, and its creative force, Tim vdW. Here was a guy, about my age, who had dedicated as much of his life and energy to photography – Leica-based film photography no less – as I had dedicated to competitive running. Different hobby, same passion. I liked him immediately.

The more I delved into Tim’s writing and creative output, the more our connection grew. I especially liked the fact that he steadfastly defended the turf of film photography against the onslaught of digital. Pixels didn’t matter an iota to him. It was more about the emotional impact, the art, than about the technical features of the latest camera. And on that point, Tim had the knowledge (and the courage) to state his views and share his thoughts. He wrote eloquently about the philosophical underpinnings of photography, about topics like aesthetics. His knowledge spanned centuries.

I had never read articles that tied the Greek philosophers to this hobby. But as a returning student, I was more than willing to learn. His lucid posts entertained me (and his other devotees) while they educated me, complete with photographs from his archives and his bike rides around North Carolina. He put together a book of his photographs taken from inside cars – it was called Car Sick – and I bought not one but two copies. (You see, he had made it abundantly clear to his readers that he had lost his shirt on the production of the book. I wanted him to keep going.)

When Tim announced to his readers that he had cancer, we all held our breaths. It looked bad. For a time, he stopped posting. Eventually, he informed us that he was in hospice care, with only a few days to live. Except he didn’t die. He got better, at least for a while.

In the last few months of his life, he gifted his anxious audience with constant posts, full of clear writing about his situation, and yes, some excellent photography. With a creative flourish, he turned his attention to developing the hundreds of rolls of film that had accumulated in his house. He even put together an exhibition of his life’s work.

And now he is gone. Tim showed us all how we might try to face the grim prospect of our own impending death, with grace and purpose, and good humour. As we go through the ups and downs of our own lives, we should all hope to have as much positive impact on those around us.

My first reaction to the news of his passing was to load a roll of his favourite film (Kodak Tri-X) into my Leica M6 and shoot some street photographs, hoping for his spirit to walk with me as my muse.

Tim will be missed.