I was listening to CBC radio this morning when there was an interruption for a special update. I thought for sure it was going to be the announcement of the capture of Gaddafi. Sadly, the news wasn’t good, it announced the loss of the NDP’s leader Jack Layton. In my opinion, he was the only politician, in my lifetime, who I could take at his word. This is a sad day for Canada.

I just read this amazing story from the blog Said the Gramophone:

My enduring memory of Jack Layton, the leader of Canada’s left-wing New Democratic Party, who died this morning, was that time Miranda saw him at Idée Fixe. Idée Fixe is a dive bar, my favourite. Jack was there with his Montreal team, swigging a big bottle of 50 and playing pool. It wasn’t that he was “like us” – of course he wasn’t, he was a lifetime politician, moustached and jolly, chronically un-hip, so clearly a dad who tells lame jokes and waits in the car with his hands on the steering wheel, for no matter how long. But Jack was there, at our dive bar, when he could have gone to any other bar. He came because it was the closest one, quiet, with a free jukebox. Idée Fixe is dingy, a little sad, full of sketchy characters. But who gives a shit, right? I could imagine Jack grinning his grin and asking, “Is the beer cold?”

It really resonates with me because I go to Idee Fixe quite often and can picture him fitting right in at the pool table…or selecting Phil Collins at the jukebox. I’m super devastated today.