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In 2012, I met Brett Clibbery in a Starbucks in Thunder Bay, while travelling across the country with my son Tristan. I blogged about him, and that account is in my book, Canada's Road. This week, the bodies of Brett and his wife Sarah were found washed ashore on Sable Island, after they left Halifax in June to sail to the Azores. ![]()
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My chance meeting with him has stayed with me over the years. Here's what I wrote at the time:![]()
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"I got chatting with Brett Clibbery at the Starbucks in the Chapters, and he kind of set me straight on a few things.![]()
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"Tristan had just found a book he wanted to buy that listed all the possible cheats for online games, and Brett offered a sympathetic look when my son went off to pay for it. 'Well, at least he’s reading,' I suggested. He agreed, looked at my iPhone and waved his own iPhone. 'We’re not much better when you think about it,' he said.![]()
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"It turns out that Brett is 60, originally from Kenora, but now lives on a sailboat and travels the world. Right now, he’s working for a Thunder Bay company operating charter sail trips in the area, but he’s looking forward to sailing south this winter. 'I stay in touch with people with this,' he said, waving the iPhone again. 'But it doesn’t replace writing a letter. When was the last time you wrote somebody a letter, with a pencil and paper?'![]()
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"A long time ago. These days, my hand cramps up after a hundred words or so with a pen because I’m used to keyboards. But e-mails are no replacement for written words put on paper; Brett told me of an e-mail he’d sent not long ago to an old friend he hadn’t seen in years, not since they met as actors playing in Hair in London. 'She’s fairly famous now and she gets a lot of e-mail, and she missed it when I sent it,' he said. 'So I sat down and wrote her a letter, just a page, telling her what I’ve been doing, and I sent it to her parents’ address. It took a while for her to get it, but then she wrote right back. She was thrilled.'![]()
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"The friend was Sarah Brightman, well-known for her singing performances in the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber, her former husband. ![]()
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"I think I’ll stop blogging now for tonight. I have a letter to write."![]()
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Brett later wrote and mailed me a letter that I received when I returned home a few weeks later. It was kind and supportive and thoughtful, and I'll always keep it. Not like the e-mails I delete every day, or lose when the technology fails. He was a remarkable man and the teacher of a very simple lesson, and my life is better for having met him.
Linked In tells me that today is my eighth anniversary writing for The Globe and Mail. How time flies! Thanks to Tom Maloney for bringing me on in 2016 and rescuing me from the Toronto Star's Night of the Long Knives, and thanks to Jordan Chittley for not firing me yet.
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