Jeoff Bull was my oldest friend.<\/p>\n
I was probably around 6 years old when I met him. My family had just moved to Ottawa and I was looking for friends on my first day in the new city. I went to the nearby school yard and saw two boys my age playing Cowboys and Indians. I remember that they were shirtless– running and whooping and jumping under the sun.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n Jeoff was one of those boys, and when he saw me sitting alone watching, he stopped for a moment and asked me if I wanted to play.<\/p>\n There was nothing in the world that I wanted to do more.<\/p>\n And so we played.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n It’s funny how people come to us, how the course of a life can be directed by one lucky encounter. For me, this was one such encounter, and for the next 45 years I considered him amongst my very best friends. He died on January 2nd, the cancer a wave that broke into him, spreading everywhere with a merciless and astonishing velocity.<\/p>\n The man, you should know, was a goddamn genius.<\/p>\n