Eleven-year-old Shyanne Reid-Thomas looked like any other anxious grade-schooler would in front of almost 400 people as she approached the lectern of the Apple Creek Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Markham yesterday.
Her long black hair braided into a ponytail and tied with a blue ribbon, she shyly gripped the microphone to pull it down to her level before starting to speak.
Though she read the passage with nervous speed, the words she spoke bore testament to the strength it must have taken just to be standing there.
"Do not stand at my grave and weep; I am not there; I do not sleep," she read, a passage from poet Mary Frye.
While she could not see over the lectern to his baby-blue casket, Shyanne's words were meant for her father, Elliot Reid-Thomas, the 29-year-old whose body was found last weekend in an alley behind a west-end after-hours club.
She, like the rest of her extended family, which was so large it could barely fit into the front three rows of the church, did not want her father to be forgotten.
She, like everyone who knew him well, likely could not believe Mr. Reid-Thomas, known as Blacks, is gone.
"I never thought that it would come to this," Kwajo Boateng, one of the members of Mr. Reid-Thomas's Juno-winning rap group, Ghetto Concept, said in a recorded message.
"Never could I have imagined that someone could just take you out like this, for no reason."
As family and friends offered thoughts and memories about the successful music manager, so too came a frustration with gun violence in the community.
"We will not take this any more. Our young men are dying in our streets, weekend after weekend," said faith leader Don Meredith of the GTA Christian Alliance.
"Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for us as a community to rise up and talk to our politicians, talk to our leaders.
"I will not attend another funeral of another young black man," he said, his voice rising in a mix of frustration and anger. "It is enough."
Throughout the church, many of those who had lost friends or family to the squeeze of a trigger or the slice of a knife nodded their heads, uttered "amen" or clapped in approval.
When Mr. Meredith called upon Mr. Reid-Thomas's killer -- "a coward," he said -- to turn himself in to police, the church overflowed with the sound of applause.
As this unfolded, a man stood just outside the church, wanting, but not ready, to come inside.
"It's becoming too repetitive. I'm tired of seeing the same thing," said Kwaku, a man who had spent many years with Mr. Reid-Thomas in Rexdale.
"My cousin got cut up and died in Brampton and was left at Jane and Finch in a trunk," he said.
"I'm so deeply hurt. The amount of people I know that died."
Around his neck, next to a gold crucifix, hung a laminated card that had been distributed by the family of Mr. Reid-Thomas.
On it, a grade-school picture of Mr. Reid-Thomas, when he was undoubtedly forced by well-meaning parents to match a brown plaid shirt with a blue cardigan and mauve tie, stood beside a stark black-and-white picture of a handgun.
"We need more guys like him. Guys like him deserve to live a lot longer," he said.
Lisa Brown, who flew from Vancouver to attend the funeral, added she, too, thinks the community has lost a son and a brother.
"His whole dream was to help people, was to [change]the music industry [so]young blacks, young artists, young upcoming artists can be recognized, even if [they]are living in the ghetto," she said.
She said she will remember him partly for being well-spoken andwell-dressed, but mostly for the work he did with children and the constant encouragement he gave to his family and friends.
Belinda, Mr. Reid-Thomas's sister, said she wants to remember him in the same way.
"He spoke through music," she said during the ceremony.
"He spoke through managing; he spoke through planting seeds in everyone. . . . If his work is done here, all you have to do is do the rest."
After the funeral service, Mr. Reid-Thomas's sister, who, like many others wore an anti-gun button on her black shirt, quietly sought comfort in the company of the close friends and family that she says meant much to her brother.
While willing to speak with the media, she refrained from trying to wrap her brother's life into a sound bite.
"There are too many stories . . . for me to express, to let you know how I feel about my brother," she said.
Instead she said her brother's legacy will be in what he has given to his family and friends.
"Those who know him, know what he's done for them, and what they have," she said.
A memorial fund has been established in the name of Mr. Reid-Thomas.
Donations can be made at any TD Bank to account number 1976 625 4947.