I didn't know Jim as long as most of you but we made an instant impression on each other. I had just moved back from Winnipeg to London in September past, to open the London office for All Canadian Courier and it was my 2nd day of training in Toronto. Everyone had been very nice and welcoming and then in walked Sunny Jim. He knew who I was and why I was there but he looked at me with that look he has that says "what the hell you doing here and you better be good".

He invited me for lunch and from that time on we became close. We shared the same Family values and the love of Family, laughter, fine wine, cognac, cigars and yes, Golf. Through Steely's help, Jim helped me purchase a brand new set of irons that I was so looking forward to breaking in with Jim as well as the cigars and cognac.

Jim loved life and we both looked at life through the same eyes. I miss my new Buddy.

my sister steeley would take me to her dads house every once in awhile, and he was always very nice to me. every time i passed him he would say hi.he never was mean. I will always remember him as a great man

 I can remember the first time I met Mr.Barrett at Taylor's sixteenth Birthday party. I saw a tall man with bright blue eyes and I thought to myself, "Wow Taylor looks nothing like the guy" and I told her that too. But that was just superficial speculation; I learned that there were a great deal of similarities between the two-humour being the main attribute. You see, Taylor's party wasn't exactly your standard bowling birthday bash, no The Barrett's wanted something different-They wanted to group together six teenagers and send them on a epic adventure. This adventure consisted of numerous tasks, some of which I wondered about. For instance the very first task, inspired by the whole Niagara Falls trinket search, involved us purchasing the most useless item at the local Dollarama . So Mr.Barrett gave us all two bucks each to make such a mundane purchase, and he became very insistent on this one item, in particular, shaped as a lemon to encase a lemon in order to keep it fresh. I remember him mocking the product as if he were speaking to the actual inventor of it-repeatedly asking "Who needs that?!". Anyways, we were told that at the end of the party the winner of that task would be chosen through a voting system. And so with the first task aside, we ventured on to the other tasks such as an intense Dance Dance Revolution competition, an Icing "fill your own loot-bags" session and finally five pin bowling (which I dominated) Finally we headed off to Kelseys to settle the whole useless item dilemma. I was pretty sure I was going to win with my old school snap lids, but Taylor ended up taking the cake with her picture of Jesus Christ (don't worry the people surveyed, to pick out the most useless item of the bunch, were found at the bar) Upon hearing the results Mr.Barrett was surprised, only because he was disappointed that no one agreed with him in believing the lemon case was utterly pointless. At that point I realized how much Taylor and Mr.Barrett were alike-their humour was identical. Therefore, in a way I knew Mr.Barrett quite well through Taylor's resemblance of him.

  Mr.Barrett is one of the coolest Dads I have ever met. He was very open, generous and down-to-Earth, just like Taylor is now. I am grateful to have met Taylor and her family and may the spirit of James Barrett live on because he truly is forever missed.

Ravina Banwait