Even as a young man, the first question Kirk MacLeod asked friends he hadn’t seen for a while was, “What are you reading now? Eulogizing MacLeod earlier this week, one of those friends recalled when Kirk came home from a date with the woman who would become his wife — appropriately enough a librarian named Paige. Having visited her home for the first time, he said, “You should see this woman’s bookcases! But MacLeod was more than a bookworm. Before cancer took his life at the age of 42, he earned black belts in two martial arts, became an expert scuba diver and worked around the world as a United Nations peacekeeper. When his UN job had him living in New York, MacLeod, who grew up in Liverpool, became the centre of a group of guys that got together for ridiculously intense workouts and equally intense socializing. “A bearded, loud, chipper Canadian . . . telling tales of exploring and eating his way through virtually every exotic corner of the world, is how one of MacLeod’s “New York posse described him. “Not just a UN security badass, making the world a better place . . . who could give impromptu lectures on the geopolitical situation in the Middle East, or tell you where to grab the best food in Nepal or Nairobi. He was endlessly interesting and endlessly interested in others. One of his United Nations colleagues called MacLeod “a bearded warrior poet of the first order, and the UN sent Chris Maxfield to Halifax to speak at his funeral. Maxfield told those gathered for the service how MacLeod developed a program of safety and security training to help keep UN personnel working in places like Libya, Central African Republic, Afghanistan , Iraq, Syria and Congo alive, crediting him with saving thousands of lives, both now and in the future. “In each one of these places, Kirk has had an impact, Maxfield said. “He leaves a legacy. Last year, having gone through three cancer surgeries and chemotherapy, and with a port in his chest through which medication was delivered, MacLeod, craving a challenge, decided the thing to do was train for the Big Swim across the Northumberland Strait to raise money for Brigadoon Village. Plenty o f friends thought it was a dangerous idea. “A 14-kilometre open-water swim, four months to train for it, at a post-chemo weight of 140 pounds? What was he thinking? He was thinking ‘f--- cancer,’ said Court Wing, who helped MacLeod design his swim training program, and drove 16 hours each way to attend his funeral. “My fear was we would break him in his fragile state, Wing said, his voice breaking. “But he started to be able to attack his workouts again. MacLeod wrote on his wetsuit the names of people who had died of cancer. He planned for the swim to take five hours, but when wind blew him off course and added three kilometres to his route, he swam for 6 1 ⁄ 2 . He was “ecstatic when he finished. “If you had cut his leg off, he would have made it, Wing said. “That was the kind of man Kirk MacLeod was. People on at least four continents watched a streaming feed of MacLeod’s non-denominational funeral service, which included readings from Theodore Roosevelt, Shakespeare and an ancient Eastern philos opher. The service was officiated by Halifax Chebucto MLA Joachim Stroink, a 20-year friend of MacLeod, who is survived by a wife and three children
Posted on: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 12:18:18 +0000