Daniel J. Christie was the real thing: an authentic troublemaker, astute, passionate, razor-sharp

Polemicist. Maverick. Raconteur. Friend. Born June 28, 1950, in Toronto; died May 3, 2017, in Port Hope, Ont., of cancer; aged 66.

I first met Dan Christie shortly after he moved to Port Hope in the early 1990s. He had joined the local newspaper's advisory board and I remember thinking, as I listened to him extemporize on a dozen unrelated subjects, that here was someone whose intelligence was so acute that his opinions became mine by default. Only later did Dan become a columnist.

Years later I adjusted that view slightly, coming to believe that Dan spent his gifts on too many local issues, but nobody could doubt his energy and zeal. Dan was made for the political cauldron, however tepid the brew, and he was better at its analysis than anyone I know. He was the real thing: an authentic troublemaker, astute, passionate, razor-sharp and his observations about local politics and politicians were often very funny.

It was no secret that Dan liked a tipple. Perched on his favourite stool at the local pub, he seemed fragmented and incomplete sitting there alone – until, inevitably, someone joined him and he began to energize like a Star Trek apparition. The beer, in any case, was incidental to the event, the price of admission to an amusement park that consisted entirely of ideas and conversation.

Dan spent most of his working life on trains, first as a CN brakeman, then as a GO transit conductor and driver, and finally as an engineer with VIA, before retiring in 2005.

It is worth noting that Dan never finished Grade 8, this one-time columnist for the local newspaper, the Port Hope Evening Guide, who was, for several years, a familiar name on The Globe and Mail's letters page. "CBC radio was my postsecondary education," he once told me.

And it was typical of Dan that he would call his colorectal cancer simply "rectal c," as if the compound noun needlessly dignified the malady.

During his last two years, Dan hosted a series of informal gatherings at his home and I had never seen him happier. It was as if he knew that his illness conferred on his time an enviable premium and that he wanted to spend some part of it on convivial conversation.

This is not the place to list all of Dan's contributions to Port Hope. Even people who didn't know him knew the name, and although he ran twice, unsuccessfully, for council, few councilors have contributed as much to Port Hope as Dan. His written opinions alone marked him out for distinction, and he would surely have defended in writing, again and again, the principle of open and transparent municipal governance had he been elected. Frequently, he took a schoolboy's delight in knowing that his comments were rude, in the same way, perhaps, that an archer delights in knowing that her arrows are sharp, but away from the political arena, Dan was one of the kindest and most generous people I have known.

Those of us who knew Dan Christie, who valued and courted his friendship, will now have to adjust to the strange new space at the pub, taking what comfort we can from his memory, recalling his wit, his eloquence and his unbridled humanity, knowing that there will never be another person quite like him in our lives again.

With a son David, predeceased, from a previous marriage, Dan leaves his wife Marnie; his daughters Robyn and Danielle; and his first grandchild due in September.

George A. James is Dan's friend.