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Fifty-two years ago today, he died. More than half a Century.

In my family, he was our uncrowned King. We were living in Dallas when they killed him, and I can still remember my Mom and Dad crying.

The bust on the right was found in an antique shop in Brighton, Ont. The photo on the left is of Bobby and his son Bobby Kennedy Jr., with whom I worked on an anti-tobacco file. On it, Bobby Jr. wrote: “Warren – see you on the barricades. Bobby Kennedy.”

Fifty-two years. So much would have been different – and so much better.

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Riots across the country.  Dozens of them, every night.

Blood all over the streets.  Broken glass crunching underfoot.  Tear gas and smouldering police cars combining to produce a stench that is as unbearable as it is unforgettable.  Fear is everywhere, tight as the zip ties on a protestor’s wrists.  

The protestors? After night and night of this, they are spent but still unable to sleep. Like someone once sang, they ain’t got no swing – except for the ring of the truncheon thing.

Hundreds injured.  Some killed.  More than $100 million in property damage – lost to looting and arson and destruction, much of it done by whites with no skin in the game.  As it were.

The United States is at war with itself.  Like Dr. King once said, a hundred lifetimes ago, the “nation’s Summers of riots are caused by our Winters of delay.”  They will continue to happen, he said back then, “as long as America postpones justice, equality and humanity.” 

The postponement of justice, equality and humanity has been presided over, in the main, by the Republican candidate for President of the United States.  A vile, contemptible shadow of a man, whose default position is racism and and sexism and hate and dark conspiracy theories.

It’s his metier.  In this Summer of Riots, it works for him.  Always has.  He’s been here before.

The Republican nominee decries the riots, but he secretly revels in them. Every brick thrown, every car torched, every small business reduced to ashes – they are re-electing him.  

And the Republican smiles, his prophecy nearly complete.

In all, there have been 159 riots.  In Buffalo, the riot started on the East Side.  Some black teenagers had been breaking some windows on William Street.  Within hours, 200 riot police are dispatched, and the street battles commence in earnest. The following day, it gets worse, with cars flipped over, stores looted, graffiti spray-painted everywhere. This time, 400 police are on hand. By the end, forty blacks are seriously injured – nearly half from bullet wounds. 

In Newark, two white cops arrest a black cab driver, who has signalled to pass a double-parked police car.  They arrest him, viciously beat him, and take him to the 4th Police Precinct, where he is charged with assaulting the officers and “making insulting remarks.” Residents of a nearby public housing project see the unconscious taxi driver being being dragged into the precinct, and a large crowd gathers outside.  Rocks are thrown; clubs are brought down on black bodies.

Within hours, a march is organized to protest police brutality in Newark. Looting commences, and spreads quickly along Springfield Avenue, the business district. Molotov cocktails are thrown; buildings catch fire. Shotguns are issued to police. They are told to “fire if necessary.” So, a woman is killed in a fusillade of bullets directed at the window of her second-floor apartment. Things get worse: there are more riots, looting, violence, and destruction.  Many, many are hurt; some are killed.

That is just Buffalo and Newark, but it’s happening all over, like some grim newsreel footage of a broken country, falling to pieces.  

Hundreds converge on the house where the Republican presidential is huddled behind drawn curtains.  The Republican summons a senior aide, and says he wants “ideas about how to push the line.”  The aide is delighted.

He says the turmoil outside can be “made into a huge incident, if we work hard to crank it up.” It could be a “really major story,” he says, that “might be effective” on Election Day.

And so they get to work.  Having decided to stoke a racial backlash, and then ride it to victory, the Republican Party’s candidate for the presidency threatens the rioters at every opportunity. The rioters are filled with “bitter hatred” for all that is good in America, he says.

“It will get worse unless we take the offensive!” he thunders.  “We must restore order!”

By now, a columnist’s sleight of hand may have been revealed.  The Republican presidential nominee above is not Donald Trump, it is Richard Nixon.  The year is not 2020 – it is 1967 and 1968, when Nixon was catapulted into the White House by a white middle class that has grown terrified of race riots on their TV screens every night.

Dr. King, in those quotes up above – in that speech he made at Stanford in 1967, speaking to a mostly-white audience about the Watts riots in Los Angeles – also said that “riots are the language of the unheard.” And they are.  They don’t just spring out of thin air – riots happen for a reason.

But they are also “socially destructive and self-defeating,” Dr. King said.

And if we’re not careful, they may re-elect Donald Trump.  

Just like they elected Richard Nixon.

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Here’s a #TBT! Here’s the Hot Nasties at the Calgary Stampede, 1980, for our last-ever show with Tom and Wayne.

There were 2,000 there for us and George Wall’s amazing Rock’n’Roll Bitches from Edmonton. Allen Baekeland (RIP) told us it was the best show we ever did. Forty years ago!‬

[Left to right: Sane the Wayne Ahern, Nuclear Age Winkie Smith, Ras Pierre Schenk]

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So much death.

More than 100,000 gone in the United States. Close to 400,000 dead globally.

In Canada, more than 6,500 dead, with Quebec accounting for most of that grim figure.

And so: with so much death – so much sadness and loss – why celebrate at the occasion of yet another passing? Why actually laugh and smile about someone else, gone too soon?

Because that someone was The Bunkster, that’s why.

This writer spotted it on Facebook, first. Read it. Laughed out loud. Read it again.

Could it be true? Was it real?

It couldn’t be real.

The original obituary was tracked down, in the pages of the Arizona Republic newspaper. It was real. He was real.

Atop the obituary was a black and white photograph of a man, unsmiling, squinting. His face like a back country road, looking far older than he 65 years. Ridden hard, like they say, and put away wet.

“Randall Jacobs of Phoenix died at age 65, having lived a life that would have sent a lesser man to his grave decades earlier,” the obit read. “His friends called him RJ, but to his family he was Uncle Bunky, a.k.a. The Bunkster. He told his last joke, which cannot be printed here, on May 4th, 2020.”

It went on from there, getting better with each passing participle, getting more timeless with every sonorous, superb subclause. It was awesome.

The nameless author – suspected to be an adoring nephew, but still unrevealed – went on: “Uncle Bunky burned the candle, and whatever else was handy, at both ends. He spoke in a gravelly patois of wisecracks, mangled metaphors, and inspired profanity that reflected the Arizona dive bars, Colorado ski slopes, and various dodgy establishments where he spent his days and nights. He was a living, breathing “hang loose” sign, a swaggering hybrid of Zoni desert rat, SoCal hobo, and Telluride ski bum.”

And: “Just days after his beloved cat Kitters passed away, he too succumbed to ‘The Great Grawdoo,’ leaving behind a vapor trail of memories and a piece of sage advice lingering in his loved ones’ ears: ‘Do what Bunky say. Not what Bunky do.’”

Not what Bunky do! Wow. Could it get any better? It could. It did.

And at the end, the payoff. The money shot. The glorious clincher. Joy sprouting like daffodils amongst the winter melancholy.

“When the end drew near, he left us with a final Bunkyism: “I’m ready for the dirt nap, but you can’t leave the party if you can’t find the door.”

He found the door, but the party will never be the same without him.

In lieu of flowers, please pay someone’s open bar tab, smoke a bowl, and fearlessly carve out some fresh lines through the trees on the gnarliest side of the mountain.”

Astounded, delighted, grateful, this writer simply tweeted a snapshot of Bunky’s obituary, beneath the words: “Now this is an obit.”

That’s it. No adjectives, no spin.

That tweet would go on to be seen more than ten million times in a few short days. Ten million! Big Hollywood names said Bunky should be the subject of a movie. Blue-checked authors marveled at it. National radio star Charles Adler devoted part of a show to it. Even J.K. Rowling, she of Harry Potter fame, indicated her tweeted approval.

People said they wished they had known Bunky, and smoked a bowl with him. They said they’d just paid a stranger’s bar tab. They pleaded with their friends and family: when my time comes, make my obit sing like Bunky’s did. Make me immortal.

Immortality is what we all seek – whenever we build something, when we publish a book or a song, when we paint the stars we glimpse from our respective spots in the gutter.

When we give birth to a child (as women do) – or affix our surname to that child (as men do). It’s why headstones are stone, and not wood. We grasp at forever, but very few of us ever catch it.

We don’t want to be forgotten. We want to be remembered, because we now know that that elderly relative – speaking to us quietly at some family gathering, in our callow youth, when we paused just long enough to hear something other than the music – was indeed right: life is fleeting. It is here one moment, and it is gone the next.

Grasp it.

During this pandemic – ferrying a foul, unkillable virus to every doorstep, every guiltless family – life has become even more ephemeral. Even more fragile than it was. A whisper.

Cases in point: during the pandemic, this writer has lost three men, all gigantic figures from his Calgary youth. Otto, Mike, Allen: all died, all gone, and none yet granted the sort of funeral they deserved.

This writer wrote about all three, on the Internet. But my tributes seemed pale and flimsy. Those three men deserved more.

So – like Randall Jacobs, The Bunkster – let us properly celebrate every one of the ones we have lost. Let us compose memorable obituaries – or sonnets, or poems, or drawings, or songs – to remember them. Let us pay tribute to them, as some nameless genius memorably paid tribute to The Bunkster.

Now, more than ever before, life is precious. It is fleeting. It is a gift, returned to sender too soon.

Make your loved ones, and total strangers, immortal.

As Bunky is.

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Armed police officers stopping people who were doing nothing wrong, and turning them away. 

It’s happened a lot, during this pandemic. It’s happened in Canada, too. 

For weeks, for example, Quebec’s government put police on bridges leading from Ontario into Quebec. Thousands of people were stopped. Most got through, but thousands were turned back. 

For weeks, Gatineau Police set up “random roadside checkpoints” at the Alexandra Bridge, Portage Bridge, Chaudieres Bridge, Champlain Bridge, and Masson-Angers Ferry. The feared Surete du Quebec, meanwhile, was responsible for the Macdonald-Cartier Bridge. 

There were objections, although not from the federal government; there was a petition, but it gathered few signatures. Quebec only signaled its intention to abandon the “checkpoints” by the end of this, the Victoria Day long weekend. 

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson said: “I’m glad the Quebec Government has finally announced its decision to open up the border between Ottawa and Gatineau.”

He added: “I still don’t understand what was accomplished, but I am pleased that residents on both sides of the river can pass by freely.”

Nobody else really understood either. Why did Quebec’s government order the border patrols? Was it because they sometimes enjoy enraging the rest of Canada (because they do)? Was it because they are nativists and nationalists (because they are)? Was it because Quebec has achieved the distinction of being the seventh-worst place in the world for virus-related deaths (because it has)?

Who knows. It wasn’t saying. Besides, Quebec wasn’t the only government setting up armed blockades within Canada. New Brunswick did it, and so did Prince Edward Island.

In New Brunswick, for weeks, “provincial enforcement officers” were stationed at seven different road crossings, and two airports. Their task: turn back – forcibly, if need be –  anyone they deemed to be “traveling for non-essential reasons.” Canadians from Quebec, PEI and Nova Scotia were routinely refused entry to New Brunswick.

Over and over, motorists trying to enter the province had their licences checked and licence plates recorded – and they were grilled about where they’d been and where they were going. New Brunswick residents were being stopped and questioned, too.

Prince Edward Island, being an island, had an easier time of it.
There, highways staff – not police – were given authority by the provincial government to stop anyone crossing the Confederation Bridge.  The Confederation Bridge, a 13-kilometre fixed link between New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, was built and paid for by Canada.

“Don’t come if it’s not essential,” sniffed PEI’s Minster of Transportation.  “You are going to be turned away.”

And turned away they were. Case in point: Barry Humberstone, a 60-year-old land-owning PEI resident, had the wrong address on his driver’s licence. They wouldn’t let him across. He was sent away, even though he had nowhere to go.

Just as they did with the “checkpoints” on bridges leading into Quebec, the federal government said nothing about what PEI was doing. Zero.

There can be a debate about whether these measures – PEI quaintly, and appropriately, called theirs “Operation Isolation” – helped prevent the spread of the virus. In Quebec’s case, that seems highly doubtful. But it will be debated, at some distant point, in a Royal Commission or an inquiry. Or something.

But what about this question: were the actions of Quebec and New Brunswick and PEI actually legal? What about that?

Because, on a plain reading of Canada’s Constitution – which is, you know, our supreme statute – the blockades were completely illegal.

Section six of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is about mobility rights. Here is what it says: “Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.”

How important is that section? This important: section 33, the so-called notwithstanding clause – which governments like Quebec’s have routinely invoked to gut essential freedoms – does not even apply to it. It was seen by the framers of our Constitution as that critical: governments aren’t allowed to opt out of it – pandemic or no pandemic.

Sure: section one of the Charter permits courts to determine whether an unconstitutional measure is “reasonable.” But Quebec, New Brunswick and PEI didn’t even bother to make a quick reference application before a court to determine if they were in fact acting legally.  They just went ahead and set up blockades, some of them maintained by police officers carrying guns.

Many, I suspect, won’t care. Better safe than sorry, they’ll say. Better to lose some freedoms than lose one’s life.

And all that is perhaps true. But this is also true: constitutions are designed to guide us through bad times, not good times. They are designed to be the law of the land.  They are designed to remind us who we are, as a people.

During the Great Pandemic of 2020, in some parts of Canada, we needed to be reminded.

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It is a sunny day in August 1986, and the interview with Canada’s High Aryan Warrior Priest is wrapping up.

His name is Terry Long. At the kitchen table on his acreage outside Caroline, Alberta, he looks like any other farmer. But he’s not.

Long has just spent several hours telling me how blacks are mud people, and how Jews are the literal spawn of Satan, and how Jesus Christ was not a Jew.

The interview over, and safely taped, I demur.

“Sorry, Mr. Long, but Jesus was a Jewish rabbi at all relevant times,” I say.

Long gets up and retrieves a book from his living room. He hands it to me. “It’s our bible,” he says. “The Christian Identity bible. Jesus wasn’t a Jew.” He taps the cover. “It’s right in there.”

The Calgary Herald photographer assigned to the story was Larry MacDougal. Larry drove us back to the newsroom while I marvelled.

“Jesus isn’t a Jew anymore, just like that,” I said to him, snapping my fingers. “Print up your own bible, and make him into a sword-swinging Christian warrior.”

Which the “Aryans” did.

I was reminded of that long-ago encounter, this week, when I posted the number of deaths caused by the coronavirus in the United States – on the day in question, around 72,000 (by the time you read this, it is much more than 80,000). The number came from the Johns Hopkins CSSE.

A women immediately responded. “It’s a hoax,” she tweeted.

I was stunned, a bit. I blocked her. Others – Donald Trump fans – also started to claim, directly or by innuendo, that the Johns Hopkins figure was a hoax.

Like, you know, Terry Long and Jim Keegstra and Ernst Zundel used to say the Holocaust was: a hoax. And, if you didn’t believe it, they had their own historical reference books to prove it. Just like they had their own bibles.

Before the virus started to kill off thousands of us, Donald Trump literally said it was “a hoax,” too, conjured up by his political enemies. Fret not: it would disappear “like a miracle,” he said. It would be gone by Spring, he said, when it was warmer.

When all that turned out to be a lie, Trump said malarial drugs would cure it. When that was shown to be a lie, too, he mused about injecting people with disinfectants, or bathing the insides of their bodies with light.

Nobody needed to say any of that was a lie, however. Even Trump’s most ardent followers wouldn’t agree to inject bleach in themselves.

Joe Biden didn’t help matters, either. Despite being isolated in his basement TV studio in Delaware, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee was wiping the floor with Donald Trump. Ten points ahead in every battleground state, without having to shake a single hand.

Donald Trump was losing, big time. So, what did Donald Trump do?

He did the only thing he had left: he embraced the Terry Long strategy. Like Zundel and Keegstra and all the historical revisionist Hitler freaks do, Trump’s winged monkeys simply commenced bleating that the coronavirus death toll – a death toll made inarguably worse by their hero – was a hoax.

A hoax.

Scott Jensen, a Trump loyalist and Republican state senator in Minnesota, stated that Corvid-19 numbers were being diabolically inflated by Trump’s enemies. Soon enough, Fox’s Laura Ingraham and Infowars started repeating Jensen’s false claim.  Qanon came next, asserting that a fake death toll was designed to cause “mass hysteria” in an election year.

Donald Trump, the Troll-in-Chief, promptly picked up the revisionist refrain.  Trump retweeted those who claimed that Trump’s enemies were inflating the death toll to “steal the election.”  

And now, of course, pandemic truthers are everywhere.  It’s a “plandemic” and a “hoax.”

Do the Corvid-deniers represent a real threat? Could they get away with such an evil lie?

Terry Long, with his hand on his very own bible, would likely say they could.

 

 

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