Rick Fielding and I used to talk about Pete Seeger all the time -- he was the reason Rick became a musician, he'd seen him in a concert in Montreal. I remember thinking that I had missed out on seeing Pete Seeger in my life, and then he came to Toronto for a documentary film and I got to see him play. One of the thrills of my life.

There is a lovely story in a New Yorker profile of Seeger some years ago. The author of the profile had interviewed Seeger a number of times and was trying to figure out how to end the piece. The author had to put things on hold to go and visit his mother who lived north of Albany, so he got into his car and drove north through a pelting rainstorm. This was during the runup to the Iraq War. Somewhere on the road to Albany he passed a man standing out in the middle of nowhere beside the highway, all alone in the pouring rain, holding up a sign saying "No to the War in Iraq!". As he was going by, the author suddenly realized that the man was Pete Seeger.

And let us not forget that he was one of the great early voices for the environment. My music group will be singing "Sailing Up, Sailing Down" next week in tribute.

Bye, Pete. You were one of the few proofs that human beings are worthy of existence.

Peter T.