Tex Enemark: The Great Feminist Warrior

In the world of politics, there are dolphins and there are sharks.
Tex Enemark was a dolphin.
Not that Tex wasn't above wielding a sharp elbow now and then. Every dolphin learns that the ocean is full of other bad fish who would happily filet the likes of him for dinner.
But he knew the secret of being a successful dolphin.
He learned to swim with sharks.
And he did so with aplomb.
He used his affable nature to disarm. He cajoled. He wined. He dined.
He laughed, and laughed and laughed.
Because Tex had one rare piece in his DNA often even missing in dolphins.
He was pure of heart. A golden child with hair to match, a big man with hard hands who enjoyed sinking ships in the waters around British Columbia, to attract marine life, and allow grown up boys like him to dive around looking at stuff like a character in a Stephen King novel, pretending to be in search of doubloons.
I'm sure he was laughing through his pain at the comments when he first posted the news he was dying of cancer on Facebook a few weeks back.
"View from my room in Vancouver General Hospital," he wrote. "I have been diagnosed with stage four stomach cancer and it is not clear what the future will hold."
Torrents of posts follows offering him the usual "hopes and prayers," "you got this," etc.
Finally he shut them down.
"I'm long past any treatment or hope of recovery. But I have enjoyed knowing you and wish you well."
You see, always the operative, Tex already had a plan.
Yesterday, we learned he had availed himself of doctor-assisted dying, the legislation recently brought in by the Trudeau Liberals.
In his last writing in the Tyee, he said he was enormously grateful to Dr. Jane Philpott and Jody Wilson-Raybould for "the law they worked out together that now allows me peaceful resolution of an intolerable medical condition."
In his parting shot, Tex acknowledged that he had received a handwritten letter from the Prime Minister acknowledging his contributions to public life.
"I hope we will find our way back to the vision of 2015 where transparency and inclusive leadership is how we move forward."
Wise words from a dolphin with just the slight detection of a deliberate elbow.
RIP Big Man.
All hail to the great feminist warrior.