Jack Layton Biopic

IF You Have Tears Shed Them Now

If you have tears shed them now for this is a time to grieve . When done we will look onto what Canada has inhertited and not what it has lost. People die heroes don't and their contributions go on to refuel mankind with the virtues of Love Faith Hope and Charity . Jack left the world a better place and showed us how to fight a great battle and it will go on until we win worldwide Cancer can be Beat and Friends of Jack Layton will keep the fight ongoing

The Orange Wave is not without tears but it can weather the storm
Olivia Chow Our condolences and many thanks for being at Jack Layton's side
Sharing your soul mate with Canada makes you a true giving Friend
This Country is in your debt , this country is Jack Layton's CANADA

You are invited to share photos and take up the battle against cancer at flickr with FRIENDS OF JACK LAYTON : http://flickr.com/groups/jacklayton

Eulogy For Cancer Victims

Jack Layton's message to Cancer victims : To other Canadians who are on journeys to defeat cancer and to live their lives, I say this: please don’t be discouraged that my own journey hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. You must not lose your own hope. Treatments and therapies have never been better in the face of this disease. You have every reason to be optimistic, determined, and focused on the future. My only other advice is to cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey, as I have done this summer

Losing a friend and a soul mate cuts at your soul , it leaves you with a wound too deep for words.

You must learn to live again and come out from a dark wall of grief .It takes time and it takes friends to guide you along the road to recovery. When light starts to shine again , you then appreciate the gifts and the love you shared with a person that was a large part of you.

Mortals cannot deny their vulnarability and when it hits home it is devastating.

Cancer has taken its toll worlwide and the aches and pain have touched everyone in one form or another.

Jack Layton left us with a wonderful message, don't give up keep fighting ,keep the battle alive until we win . Cancer can be beatten and We Will Win (WWW)

Cherish every moment with those you love: How many of us have become care givers, shoulders to lean on , friends to cling to, friends to pray with and cry with ? Is it a million a billion or a countless number?

Today August 22/2011 Olivia Chow completed a stage of her life which brings tears to all true Canadians eyes. Olivia gave her all doing everything she could for Jack and for Canada .

Jack Layton's last words are the best to help us be strong and to comfort us .

We have witnessed a Canadian Leader like no other and generations to come will look back on what he did for Canada, for Politics and for the world wide battle against Cancer.

Thank you Olivia For Being a Friend and a wife to Jack Layton who is an inspiration to us all

FRIENDS OF JACK LAYTON

A Love Story From Canada and ~~~The Orange Wave~~~

( Jack Layton Jul 18, 1950 /Aug 22, 2011 (age 61 years) Canadian
A LOVE STORY:
Politics is what drives Jack Layton and Olivia Chow – and what brought them together. The Toronto city councillors met 13 years ago when she was running for school trustee and he for city council, both of them for the New Democratic Party. Layton, 48, grew up in Montreal and has a Ph.D. in political science. He teaches at the University of Toronto. Chow, 41, came to Canada in 1970 from Hong Kong and attended the Ontario College of Art and worked as a sculptor before getting involved in social activism and politics. She also teaches at George Brown College. The two live in downtown Toronto with Chow's mother and Layton's two children from a previous marriage.
JACK: It was 1985 that we first met. We'd known of each other before that, but the moment of first attraction was at an auction we were doing for a hospital, I was the auctioneer. It was for a largely Cantonese-speaking crowd, held at Village by the Grange, and Olivia was the translator.
I found myself doing this auction with this absolutely stunning, drop-dead gorgeous, amazing woman and realizing that she was also going to be running in the upcoming election. So we thought we should go and have lunch together, and talk about the campaign. We ended up campaigning together later, and smooching in the hallways of downtown Toronto apartment buildings.
It was definitely a love-at-first-sight situation, and we've had an absolutely wonderful, joyous life ever since.
We went on our first date about three weeks after auctioning. We had a couple of dates and it became pretty clear that we were very interested in each other, at which point she took off on a pre-arranged canoe trip with three other guys – we're all good friends. To make a long story short, she came back and we took off to a friend's cottage for the weekend and moved in together as soon as we came back.
Her mother was very skeptical about me in the beginning. I wasn't the race that she'd imagined her daughter hooking up with, and, as someone who already had children, I think that was a bit of an issue in her mind. I didn't speak Cantonese, I wasn't a doctor or a lawyer. I think it was mostly that I devoured every one of her recipes with such enthusiasm that I ate my way into her affections.
The first time I had dinner with Mrs. Chow, she had some of her Mahjongg buddies over, so I was definitely on display there. I devoured the food and, at the end, I asked how to say "thank you for the good food." Now, depending on the tone you use, you can give it a totally different meaning. So I said it, with much enthusiasm, and there was this shocked silence as everyone tried to figure out what I was trying to say. One lady fell off the couch she was laughing so hard, and Olivia was in stitches. I'd just said "thank you for the good sex" in a rather raw way. My faux pas broke the ice completely. We've been good buddies ever since.
My parents were in love with Olivia from the first second. In fact, my father had been in Hong Kong in 1970, which is the year Olivia came over here. He brought back to my mom, who is a master seamstress, one of those red, Chinese wedding dresses with the embroidery on it because he thought she'd love the embroidery. When I told mom that we were getting married, she said "I don't suppose there's any remote possibility that this dress would fit but let's just take it out and have a look at it." Of course, it fit. So the wedding dress came over from Hong Kong the same time Olivia did, she just didn't know who she was going to be wearing it with.
Aside from the passionate commitment on some very similar issues, the ones we've spent our lives' work on, we also enjoy each other's company socially and we have a lot of fun together. We're either in stitches or organizing something, those are the most common states of mind.
We enjoy the same kinds of recreation - physical kind of stuff, she introduced me to whitewater canoeing and I introduced her to long-distance cycling. We have a bicycle built for two, that was our wedding gift, and we go on trips all over the place with that. We try to do one of those types of holidays every year, away from the city and our cell phones. We don't think about work and we don't talk about it.
I love her wisdom, and her youthful enthusiasm. She's got really great values on the issues - justice for people and fairness, economic fairness, respect for rights, these things motivate both of us. She's a wonderful friend. I'm her biggest fan and I pretty much gush about her all the time.
The incredible good fortune is that we've ended up on the same council together. Every night when we come home, around 11, we'll discuss the issues as we sit at the kitchen table. We try to rule out getting into too many long discussions when we're going to bed, but it doesn't always work. Issues are always on the agenda, there's no time out from that. The marriage is built all around that, it sounds corny but it's our way of celebrating life - working a lot, trying to help build a more just, equitable and environmentally sound planet for the next generations.
OLIVIA: We were auctioning for Mount Sinai hospital at the Village by the Grange, it was late at night - 1985, I think. Jack and I knew each other from political work, but this was the first time we'd had a conversation. We talked about work, campaigns, philosophy, beliefs, religion.
You sort of know after a while, you're at that age - you're not 16 anymore - and you know the kind of person you want. I think we share similar goals in life, we know what we want and value - justice, fairness, love, be good to your neighbour – it's what motivates us. So to meet someone who has that motivation and the obsessive drive similar to mine was not easy. Remember, I dated to 28 before I met him so I had lots of choices.
It was completely coincidental, us living in the same co-op. We didn't quite live together, he was on the 10th floor, I was on the fifth floor with my mom. There were lots of elevator rides that I was sort of half awake, wondering what floor am I on? So, yes, we sort of lived together but technically my address was on the fifth floor.
We married in 1988, I think we did it because we wanted a big party. The ceremony was more a commitment to the city and a commitment to each other; it was very warm, very inspiring. We even raised funds for three charities - rather than sending us presents, we asked guests to send donations to certain places, if they wanted.
Where we had the wedding, at Algonquin Island overlooking the lake and the city, was symbolic. Both of our ministers integrated their sermons, psalms and poetry into a commitment, a love for two persons and the community of friends and to the bigger community. We wanted to do it because we had different cultures at the wedding, and we wanted to represent the merging of the cultures – the more Western churchy thing, the Chinese bow to heaven and earth thing and then the tea, and then we had our gay friends talk about how same sex partners should be able to get married. We did that so our Chinese friends would be more knowledgeable to our other group of friends because they don't necessarily cross. In Jack's mind we had over 1,000 people there but I think we had 900. He tends to go over the top a bit.
We are both very religious in non-religious ways. We share spiritual values in our understanding of the universe and why we are here. We're influenced by the same philosophy and religious values, and politics is really a manifestation of what we believe in. Even if tomorrow we both left politics, that would not change. For us, that soul part, spiritual dimension, is the same.
We do have a bit of trouble co-ordinating our calendar - he never knows what I'm doing and I never know what he's doing and we often double-book. Last week, I had a party here and he had a party scheduled. here, too. So I bumped his elsewhere.