Remembering Jack LeClair

Jack LeClair died on Saturday.

Jack was a neighbour, around the corner on King Street, for all the years I’ve lived in downtown Charlottetown, a fellow “downtown liver,” as our mutual late friend and neighbour Catherine Hennessey used to call us.

The heart of where I remember Jack sits 25 years ago sits down the street at Eddie’s Lunch, where we were both regulars. I wrote this in 2001:

Eddie’s has always been a relatively successful local lunch counter; a renovation this spring (and into summer, alas!), has given them about triple the capacity. And they have, I think, been able to preserve a lot of the “Eddie’s ambience” in the updated space.

Now it used to be that the only people you ever heard of going to Eddie’s were people from the neighbourhood like photographer Jack LeClair (just up King St.) and poet Catherine Matthews (just across Prince St.).

Eddie’s later became Viva’s, and Jack and I continued to see each other there.

I can’t really tell you much factual about Jack, indeed most of what I learned from his obituary was news to me, but I can tell you something about how being around Jack made me feel. 

Here’s something I read yesterday, from a post how to stay awake to your own life:

One way that seems to help is meeting people who themselves are particularly lucid and clear-eyed, who have so clearly organised their life around what matters to them. You can see how their life has been animated by a fundamental quality of intent, a deep reconciliation and careful evaluation of what was expected from them, integrated with their own essence. Being in their orbit can feel instantly clarifying, like I become more awake by osmosis, just from witnessing how they exist in the world.

That’s an fair approximation of what being around Jack felt like. I shared with a mutual friend this morning that Jack exuded an air of “calm, confident, creative”; Jack wasn’t frantic (like the rest of us), and so being around him involved a kind of pleasant coregulation, something that allowed that “fundamental quality of intent” to shine through. 

Being around Jack felt good.

And although I hadn’t gotten to experience that in person for some time, it’s a feeling I will forever carry with me when I think of him.

Goodbye, Jack. I’ll raise a cup of tea to you this morning.