... a man you don’t meet every day
Marc David Richard Rigby
July 27, 1969 – January 21, 2011
Obituary | Tributes | Service of Celebration | Photo Gallery | Marc's Xmas Baskets
Duncan's Remarks (Long-time Friend)
My earliest memory of Marc is from almost 25 years ago at Aldershot High School in Burlington, when he was about 18. It’s perhaps not surprising that this image stuck in my mind: he was, after all, wearing a black cape and juggling coloured bean bags at the time.
He was running for student council president, and while all the other candidates earnestly pledged to provide better services to the student body, he decided to go a different route: sheer entertainment was what the students needed, he declared, and that’s what he would provide.
That’s when the juggling began, much to the amusement of the gymnasium full of students. It worked: despite having absolutely no platform to speak of, he did win a seat on the council.
I was in that audience. I didn’t know Marc then – he was a year older than me, a year ahead of me in school, and way, way cooler. But we had some friends in common, and as it happened, we both chose to attend Queen’s University after we finished high school.
I joined him there a year after he began his electrical engineering degree, and he took pity on me, though I was just a lowly frosh. He invited me to several amazing house parties with his friends and many memorable nights at the Kingston Brew Pub.
I was young and back then and I fancied myself a bit of a socialist. I remember finding Marc’s much more developed free market views a bit frightening. My initial reflex was to write Marc off as ruthless capitalist – someone with whom I didn’t have much in common. But I quickly realized that Marc didn’t fit that mould at all. He was unique and defied any stereotype you could come up with.
He was a true engineer, but he was tapped into the underground music scene. He had a talent for business, but he also loved cooking. He knew how to make money, but he was also stunningly generous.
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Now almost who knew him will have a story about Marc’s almost embarrassing generosity. Well here’s mine:
It was about six years ago. We were celebrating the 50th birthday of my partner Pierre in Toronto. Marc was kind enough to make the trip up for the party, and when it came time to open the birthday gifts, he handed over a gift bag weighted down with what looked like three large bottles.
Pierre reached in and pulled out the first. It was a 10-year old bottle of Scotch. A thoughtful and much appreciated gift to be sure. But there was more.
Pierre reached in again, and this time, he pulled out an even nicer bottle of Scotch, this one was 15 years old, and a rich, smoky amber. It was obviously quite a pricey bottle – well beyond the reach of our usual whiskey budget.
But, yes – there was more. And when Pierre pulled out the last bottle, we just about fell over: It was a bottle of 25-year-old Scotch. I couldn’t believe it – Marc had obviously spent at least a couple of hundred dollars on whisky, far more than he should have. (And far more than I spent on Pierre’s gift, for that matter.) I asked him why he felt it necessary to buy three expensive bottles of whisky – when just one would have been more than generous.
"Actually," he explained, "I did it to save money. You see I wanted the age of the whiskey to add up to 50 – for Pierre’s 50th birthday. Do you have any idea how expensive 50-year-old whiskey is? Three bottles was the cheap way out."
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As generous as Marc was with gifts, he was just as generous with something that’s even more precious: His time.
Whether it was a birthday party, a New Year’s party, a barbeque or just a night out at the pub, Marc would almost always be there, even when it wasn’t convenient.
It got to the point where any celebration was incomplete if he wasn’t there. I think it was last New Year’s, or perhaps the one before that, when I realized that somehow, despite my initial worries that we didn’t have much in common, I’d somehow always end up chatting to him for hours at these gatherings.
And after we chatted, even after knowing him for more than 20 years, I’d always come away surprised about how much he knew about the arts, about history, the classics, about travel, about everything. It seemed that he’d been to every great city, read every critically acclaimed book, cooked every gourmet dish, listened to every moving piece of music.
In many ways, he had lived three times the life that I had – and he had a wealth of experiences, witty anecdotes and cutting insights to show for it. This afternoon I just wanted to say how lucky I was to able to enjoy a little of that richness in my life. And I wanted to say thank you to Marc, for everything.