My very good friend, Malcolm McArthur, passed away yesterday, Wednesday, August 23, 2023 at approximately 7:00 pm. We had been friends since grade one, so that’s more than sixty years. We grew up together, saw the world together, and now he is gone, to a better place, as my mother would say. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

But of the life lived in between, I will not forget, until I too am gone.

I called him “Max” (how this came to be is too long a story for this page) from the time we graduated high school until this very day. “Max” because he lived his life for others to the maximum. Whatever he could do for you, he would do, not in the proverbial give you the shirt off his back kind of way, but in a much more profound way. You knew he was there. You knew he would always be there for you, until now.

Though he was born here in Canada, he bore his Sottish roots with pride. Every time we went to Scotland we always visited the town of Elgin, and sought out the house where his great grandparents lived. It’s still there, a humble house with a humble door, down a narrow alley off one of the main roads.

He was a lover of history. And not just world history, but the private histories he shared with all his friends. He could recall details going back decades which none of us could remember. When stumped we would always say, “Ask Max.”

And he never forgot a birthday.

A loyal friend, he always had your back. In bad times, he would be at your side in an instant. In good times, he was always there to shake you hand.

In good times and bad time. A phrase which brings to mind a song by Led Zepplin. A bit of a brain cramp with which I am either blessed or cursed, I’m not sure. Yes, that song. “Good time, Bad times.” Not, perhaps, his favourite song, though he was a fan of Led Zepplin.

He was also a big fan of The Cult, a British band we discovered at The Hammersmith Odeon in London, England in 1982, and saw every time they came to Winnipeg in the years after. Maxwell like to rock out, to that I can testify.

I may be taking liberties here, but if I were to name his favourite song, I would pick “London Calling” by The Clash. Though they had his admiration, The Clash may not have been his favourite band, but the song “London Calling” very definitely called to him. He didn’t listen to the lyrics, by the way, was careless of words in most if not all songs. It was the driving beat which captured his soul, and “London Calling” did that. London with all its history, London with its Roman walls hidden in plain sight, the bridges over the Thames, and the railway stations from which you could take a morning train to Scotland and by tea time be home in Elgin, where the ghosts of his ancestors roamed. Where he too is now free to roam.

London was always calling. From London we could go anywhere. And we did. Not only to Scotland but to Paris, to Rome, to Frankfurt, to Budapest, all these places called to him. The world called to him.

And so my friend, where ever you are, do not forget us, because we’ll see you again soon enough, and I for one am looking forward to the guided tour of the next life which I know you will be kind enough to take me on, as you did here so often in this life. I’m counting on it.

This is not goodbye, but with these words I merely wish to say, “Until we meet again, my friend. Until we meet again.”