Not only is his death a tremendous loss for Canada, but also for the LGBT community. Jack took on LGBT issues, such as same-sex marriage, when it wasn’t popular to do so. His last public appearance was at Toronto’s gay pride parade. Not long after that was the press conference that had us all gasping in shock. We hoped, we prayed, we wanted to see him back in the House of Commons. But it wasn’t to be.

There’s really nothing I can add to the tributes and tears, so I’ll leave you with Jack’s final letter to Canadians and its powerful closing words. Tomorrow we’ll bid him good-bye with a state funeral, and hope that his optimism and vision will live on.

Thanks, Jack.

Jack’s final letter, read by Andrew Nichols of the CBC:

Like the woman in the video, I wasn’t aware that Americans (and Canadians west of Ontario) don’t drink milk out of bags. I grew up in Quebec and now live in Ontario, both of which offer milk in bags, in addition to cartons. So drinking milk from a bag has always been par for the course for me. “We’re on the last bag of milk!” is often heard in this house. Have a look:

A couple of years later, a co-worker said that he’d received a warning in his mailbox along the lines of, “License your cats, or . . . or . . . you’ll be fined!” A few days later, guess what was in our mailbox? Oh yeah.

We have one of those stickers on our front door that says, “Pets Inside!” along with how many cats we have. I have no idea why we stuck it on our door. I doubt a firefighter would run into a burning house to save a strange cat (I, however, would seriously consider it if one of my girls was inside, and yeah, it would be a totally stupid thing to do!). I guess the animal control patrol was in our neighbourhood looking for hardened criminals who hadn’t licensed their cats and dogs, and they arrived on our doorstep.

Busted!

Since our cats are spayed, we get a discount and pay 15 bucks per cat, rather than the regular $50, so that’s $60 (we have four). I said to my partner, “Now we’ll be dinged every year.”

Flash forward one year . . . came home tonight and guess what’s in the mailbox? An envelope containing the license renewal reminder for our cats, right? Bzzt. Wrong! Four envelopes, one for each cat, at 54 cents a pop. Inside each envelope, a renewal notice on a thin sheet of paper and an insert about donating to animal control.

Gads, what to say? Was there a reason they couldn’t put all four renewals in one envelope, since they were going to the same person at the same address? In our recycling bin, there are now four envelopes, four renewals (since I renewed online rather than through the mail), and four inserts. And the city spent $2.16 on postage when it could have spent $0.54. $1.62 would buy a couple of cans of dog or cat food. Since many folks have more than one cat or dog, I wonder how much money the city wastes on this every year that it could be spending on the animals in its care.

And the insert asking for a donation? Dear Animal Control: Please consider the $60 I just paid you to renew my cats’ licenses as my donation. After all, I won’t be getting anything in return for my $60 except for four renewals in four individual envelopes next year. Thank you.

Gotta love bureaucracy!

Update (September 27, 2010): A bit of an improvement this year. The renewal notices came in separate envelopes, but the receipts came in one. So we’re halfway there!