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Showing, not telling, how to be a man: Father's Day without my guiding lights

I am losing all my male role models. They just keep dying.

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It started with men I met through work, lifelong activists who taught me how to be a part of P.E.I. politics and culture. I wrote full length news obituaries for both of them because so many around here know their names: John Joe Sark and Leo Cheverie.

I can’t claim a close relationship with either man, but I feel their influence everywhere. I remember John Joe leading Mi’kmaw prayers in Catholic churches, telling everyone at one point to turn to the person beside them and say “you’re beautiful” and that the answer is “I know.”

I also remember the day he told me he was dying. He said it with a smile and a joke, the way he said everything. I told myself then I wouldn’t mourn a living friend, and I didn’t. I do it now.

I remember the first time I met Leo, where he was (of course) volunteering at a Music P.E.I. event. When I told him I was a journalist, his first question was if I was doing anything on the housing crisis. Later, when he got the cancer diagnosis that killed him, we did a story about early colorectal cancer screening.

That was Leo. That’s why there was a letter we all signed at The Guardian and which I took to him in palliative care. I didn’t get to say goodbye to John Joe, but I did get to tell Leo what he meant to people in my business and to me.

I only had the privilege of knowing these gentlemen for a few years. I knew my........

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