Bobby

I first met Bobby on perhaps my second day up here in Arctic Bay. Down by the breakwater my partner at the time and I discovered that we had a flat tire on the truck. As we started to change it Bobby came up, and started to help, pretty much changing the tire for us.

It was obvious that he had had some developmental problems, but even more obvious that he had a big booming laugh. He'd throw his had back and laugh like no one I knew. I reached into my wallet to pay him for his trouble, but he declined. He talked with us a short while and then was off.

Bobby was constantly helping, and he was everywhere. He threw himself into life with the enthusiasm and energy of a young kid. Always joking, always off in his own world. I think I can only recall him angry or upset two or three times, these past 11 years.

He had a mischievous bent to him. For awhile, after I retired, I worked at the airport handling cargo for the airline.  Bobby worked for the local cartage company, and after the cargo was unloaded from the jet, we'd be working together loading it onto the truck taking it back to Arctic Bay. We'd often joke with the packages, pretending that the light box we just picked up was heavy, watching the reaction of the person you passed it to. Bobby could take it further, he'd pick up a heavy box like it weighed nothing at all and pass it casually to me. It was the better joke of the two, and impossible for most to pull off.

But he was strong.

He was often in a place that none of us could see, laughing at a joke that only he knew, or making some exaggerated movements that meant something to him, and him alone. And he was everywhere, on his bike, or fishing at the breakwater, or dragging a huge magnet bar on wheels, meant to be pulled behind a truck, behind him, picking up nails from the road. Just to be helpful.

I most often saw him in three places. Riding on his bike, sitting on a crate just outside of town looking out over the bay listening to his iPod, or at the breakwater fishing. Sometimes he'd be in a little boat, or standing on pan of ice, with the boat pulled up along side.

Yesterday, I ran quickly to the store to pick up my boy and give him a ride home. As we left Bobby was at the Breakwater, standing in the little boat. A passenger remarked that it was him, we all looked and kept going. It was the last time we'd see him.

Bobby fell into the water sometime shortly after that. Whether he lost his balance, slipped, or had one of the seizures he'd sometimes have I don't know. As I drove home from work someone flagged me down and told me he was at the Health Centre, not breathing. Although I waited to hear that he was revived it was not to be. Bobby drowned yesterday afternoon.

I'll miss him, his habit of always helping out and giving of himself. And that laugh, oh how I'll miss that laugh.