Lance Bl
I learned of Larry’s passing last week, and the world seemed suddenly a little poorer for it. He and I met in grade six at Winston Churchill school in Waterloo. His family had just moved from the US and mine from Australia and we became good friends immediately. He was a larger-than-life character even then and I admired him immensely. Over the next seven years or so we came of age together and shared more adventures that I can say. We shared a love of music, a love of philosophy, a propensity to question and challenge authority, and a keen appreciation of the ridiculous. He dragged me out of my intellectual comfort zone time and again. I thought his family was the best ever; he thought mine was. After grade 12 at Waterloo Collegiate I moved away from KW—first to Australia, then Guelph, then BC. Larry moved to California, then Toronto and eventually Maine. We fell out of contact. Nevertheless, I always thought that we would track each other down in our dotage and would rediscover some kind of common ground. I regret that that never happened. I know his life had been much less straightforward, harder in many ways, than mine. As he might have said himself, brilliance is not a predictor of an easy life. That said, his brilliance lit up the world for me—I feel blessed to have had the years together that we did. My sincere condolences to his family and to all who knew and loved him, as I did.