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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