Roy Kirby: 1934-2024

Obituary: https://www.hpmcgarry.ca/memorials/roy-kirby/5412657/index.php

I believe that a recording of the Celebration of Life may be shared at a later date. If I get the link, I will put it here at the top of the page.

At the Celebration of Life, we met Peter Maloney and Sheldon Zhou from the JULC days, though I know that there were many more present in spirit. Feel free to share this link with them.

One of Roy’s favourites

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My wee eulogy, speaking of “The China Adventure” and how Roy cared for so many of us at JULC.

Good afternoon.

Roy enjoyed a long span of life and touched the hearts of many others along the way.

The people gathered here, and those elsewhere who are here with us in spirit, will have encountered Roy at different times in his and their journeys.

Some will have known him all their lives, while others will have met him somewhere along the way. In either case, we have all been fortunate to have had Roy share in our journey for some length of time, where we enjoyed his compassion, candour, curiosity, and good humour.

On the last point, good hum or, Roy shared with me several times over the years what he felt might serve as a suitable epitaph: “Roy Kirby”, he’d intone, “He meant well”. Those three words encapsulate the self-awareness, humility, and playfulness that are the qualities I most appreciated in Roy, ones you most likely encountered too.

Those of us who worked at Jilin University – Lambton College in Changchun were fortunate to have Roy join the faculty in the early 2000s where he brought both a helpful gravitas and a warm collegiality to the disparate group of people, gathered in that special place, during that special time.

Always interested in discussing teaching and learning and how we might better serve our students and improve our processes, Roy set about “Managing Difficult Conversations and Difficult People” – and there were more than a few difficult people to contend with…

But there were a far greater number of people, students, staff, teachers, and those in the local community with whom Roy enjoyed an easy conviviality. Cutting a dashing figure and setting a new sartorial standard for the rest of us, Roy was always eager to engage with others, offering the same respect and courtesy to everyone he met, regardless of their rank or station.

At Jilin University – Lambton College, Roy was a key figure for many students, for whom he had such high hopes and in whom he instilled such confidence and courage, through the care and encouragement he so freely gave. Some of those students are here today, though there is a far greater number spread across the globe who will have benefited from Roy’s mentoring and kindness.

I myself am of that lucky number and will be forever grateful to Roy for having faith in me for many years during a time when I had little faith in myself, and for mentoring and encouraging me when my spirits were low. I know there are many others like me, for whom Roy’s courage, strength, and hope have made all the difference.

To finish, I’d like to think aloud of all the conversations I had with Roy over the last seven years, likely similar to those you may have had. I don’t think I ever came away from a chat without having received a verbal book review and recommendation, or an endorsement for a new movie or TV show, and what is currently referred to as a “Dad joke”, in Roy’s case “a Granddad joke”; one from his vast abattoir of jokes.

His interest in his family, in others, in teaching and learning and growth, and life in general, and his good humour always shone through.

He will be missed and fondly remembered, for he certainly meant well.

Roy Kirby

Ní bheidh a leithéid ann arís

We shall not see his like again.