The time I’ve been able to devote to my real work—blogging—has been limited lately thanks to my editing duties, researching a potential politics story for the fall, and studying for a course I’m taking on modern drama.^{*Which will, next time some Hollywood-approved star shows up in Ottawa to decry Bill C-10, prompt some seriously trenchant comparisons with Lord Chamberlain’s censorship of George Bernard Shaw’s Miss Warren’s Profession. I recommend checking in early and often.} As such, in the grand tradition of starving freelance writers everywhere, I’m recycling some content created for another forum in hopes no one will care.

In this case, following is the text of a eulogy I delivered for Bigfoot last Thursday at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel, a launch for Walrus contributing artist Graham Roumieu’s Bigfoot: I Not Dead (which you can purchase here) that was part of the This Is Not a Reading Series put on by Pages Books. You can also read managing editor Jared Bland’s interview with Bigfoot for more.

I should note that I was forced to deliver this right after comedian and writer Seán Cullen had seemingly drawn out every laugh a hundred or so human bodies are capable of expelling in a single evening^{*Calculated by eminent guffologists to be exactly 1,753.} with his largely improvised take on how we should all learn from Bigfoot’s ability to live in the now. But no pressure.

Warning: could be viewed as vulgar by human standards, though it will seem profoundly commonplace to most sasquatches.^{*And to Michael Winter, whose scatalogical eulogy stretched the boundaries of good, bad, and awful taste—and we are all the better for having heard it.}

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