For Louis
I never actually met Louis in person. I met him through a CompuServe group involving the Apple Macintosh community. He posted remarks occasionally from a general location in Quebec, Canada. I live very far away in Alberta, Canada. I had visited Montreal a few times on business and he visited Vancouver once. I did learn, years later, he was in Granby when I commented on a company manufacturing copper vessels and he knew the company. We probably bonded over the École Polytechnique Massacre of 1989 where a very angry man shot 29 women in a technical college in Montreal killing 15 of them.
When I think back on all the years we corresponded I realized everything I knew about him was accumulated from the many e-mails we exchanged, views we shared, and the occasional photograph we sent over the emerging internet. We did talk on FaceTime when it was first released only to discover his internet would fracture during our conversation making it difficult to continue for too long. We mostly shared how our lives were going and the careers we had carved out for ourselves.
He learned I came from a large family and I learned he had one brother. He had been married once but it didn’t work out. I was just married when we learned about each other through the group. He had no children. I have one. I learned life in Granby was pretty good and a lot of his work required him to drive to different institutions across his province. Our familiarity grew over time and we both exchanged details about the system upgrades, additional peripherals for our systems, and the seemingly unending changes to storage media. He started out as a fan of the Macintosh, but in the final years of his life was using Windows more often.
Louis died at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. His last message to me was about how sick he was at present and he would reply when he felt better. I never got that reply. After months of receiving nothing I phoned. His answering machine took my message. I sent many e-mails asking how he was doing. After a year I suspected the worst. When his phone no longer worked and his e-mail bounced I knew he was probably gone. Then his web site went dark and I had to accept he was.
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Louis died alone. I know that because he rarely left his upstairs apartment. He did not like the heat in summer and had many air conditioners. He did love taking a winter vacation in the deep woods of Quebec where a one-person cabin provided peace and solitude for three or four weeks. Louis was always on a health kick of some kind the whole time I knew him. Special protein supplements, the evils of coffee, unusual sounding herbs and foods, and the occasional article warning me of the dangers of this and the benefits of that arrived periodically. We sometimes debated through e-mail about his claims. We also sometimes commiserated when bad things were happening in each other’s part of the country.
Louis was a misogynist and had very unkind words about women he dealt with in business. He had a big problem with a particular historical political figure from Quebec who became prime minister of the country. He was especially unhappy about the man’s son winning that same position more recently. He was truly mystified by the existence of men who wished to be women. He made many references to this and once shared a web site featuring a transexual man who lived as a woman asking me how this could possibly be. I never told him I knew a person who had transitioned. I felt it was too much for him to comprehend and out of respect for his discomfort I never brought it up.
He was sometimes surprized at what I knew of Quebec and its history even as he knew very little about my part of the country. He was skeptical when I told him of the number of natively French speaking people in my province, and how many names of towns reflect the French settlements in this region. I sent him a satellite image of just how big the Oil Sands development was in my province (you can see it from space). I would have liked to host a visit to my city and I would have liked to have made a side-trip to Granby to visit him.
I was very often marveling at this pen-pal kind of relationship. We shared some common interests but the differences were more numerous. These distinctions did not get in the way for either of us. We might broach a subject and the other might disagree but nothing would come of it. We would present an opinion and the other might agree or they might challenge it. It was at best convivial. I always expected it to come to an end but it stayed in play for more than 40 years.
I can admit to shedding a few tears when I remember him. There are regrets that I did not try harder to meet him in person. That I never got to show him the French communities which pioneered in this area of Canada. I have his pictures and e-mails archived still. The music he was forever send ing me, and the software keys he would share, and the often grumpy replies to my probing are all I have of the relationship.
I can’t say it was a close relationship. It was definitely distant. He and I made enough of an effort over those decades to stay in touch and respond when either felt compelled to share. I did, sometimes, hear some loneliness underlying his messages. But I cannot say I knew him very well. He lived in my mind for a very long time. Until he was gone.
I hope his spirit wanders the snowy woods of Quebec; finally at peace with himself and the world he left behind.
