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The orange wave was real. Layton and the NDP won 103 seats on May 2, 2011, and for the first and only time in its history, the party formed the official opposition with Layton at the helm. It was a huge accomplishment for the NDP, but for Jack Layton there was very little time to celebrate. The cancer had returned. It was about to race through his body.
Just one hundred and twelve days after election night, the battle against it ended.
On August 22, just before five in the morning, my phone rang. I've been around long enough to know that when the phone rings in the middle of the night the odds are it's not good news. It wasn't.
"Jack just passed away. We will be announcing it publicly in a few hours. Perhaps you could make it known before then."
I got up, showered, and dressed. I drove into Toronto from our home in Stratford thinking about those last conversations we'd had during the campaign. In St. John's after that interview had ended, I'd thanked him for being so frank about his health and his hopes in the few days we'd just spent together. Standing on the dock I'd told him that while he and I had done many interviews in the years before, all my questions in those past years had been so predictable.
Before I could say anything, he smiled and looked at me. "And all my answers were so predictable too." We both laughed. It was so true. But 2011 had been different.
I parked my car and walked into the studio where Heather Hiscox was hosting her morning show and, to her surprise, I sat down, unannounced, beside her. She could tell something wasn't right and, on air, she asked me what was up.
"Jack Layton has just died."
Heather's face said it all. She was shocked and saddened, just like so many Canadians of all political stripes were, as they found out in that same moment. A person's life have been stolen from them at the pinnacle of their professional career. The country was instantly in mourning.
Two weeks later, Layton's widow, Olivia Chow, returned with me to the spot on Toronto Island where they had been married twenty-three years before and talked about what the final moments had been like.
"It was very difficult, but he had no fear. He had no fear. He was ready, so I thought, okay. So we held him.
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