I’ve never supported a team in any way before I moved to Canada and started rooting for the Canucks. I watch all the games, I read all the press and watch all the media I can on my guys, I go on the Canucks message board and debate away with fellow fans - though we’ll never know the players, not really, we think we do and we invest a lot of emotion into supporting them, cheering when they win, screaming with frustration when they lose, hoping that they will bring us the ultimate victory so we can share their biggest and happiest moment with them. In this way they are almost like a second family and we are, indeed, all Canucks.

On Thursday May 29th we lost one of our beloved team. Luc Bourdon, our top prospect yet to play a full season for the Canucks, died in a motorcycle accident in his hometown at the age of just 21. He had an extremely promising career and, more importantly, his whole life in front of him to live and it was taken away from him, from his family and friends, and from us fans in an instant.

It is still very difficult to believe that he is actually gone, that he’ll never step foot on the ice again at GM Place, that we’ll never again chant “Luuuuuuuuc!” when he touches the puck, that I’ll never again jump up from my sofa screaming “Yes! Luc-y boy!” like I did when he scored his 2 NHL goals, that we’ll never see him develop into that top-pairing, NHL-dominating defenceman that we all hoped he would become. One week ago there was this kid who I had spent the last couple of years following - reading interviews with him, watching him on the ice for the Canucks and reading about his progress in Manitoba, just generally supporting the guy’s hopes and dreams and taking the view that he was going to be a big part of the future here in Vancouver, and now, *poof*, he’s gone.

I never thought that I could feel so upset about the death of someone that I never actually knew, but this really hit me hard and quite took me by surprise. On Friday evening after I went to his makeshift memorial at GM Place, I lay on my bed and I sobbed my little heart out - it really, really hurt. So much so that I thought that I couldn’t be crying for Luc, it must be displaced grief for somebody else. But I thought about all the people that I have known and loved who have died and I wasn’t crying for them. I really was crying for Luc.

I’m not going to grieve as long and as hard as if it was someone I knew but the emotion is raw and real all the same. After my sobbing on Friday I felt better about things and able to stop thinking about his death and move on. I seem to have gone through the whole grieving process in about 3 days - from shock, denial, disbelief, through a heap of tears and finally to acceptance and a bittersweet sadness as I remember him for who and what he was.

Goodbye Luc. We’ll miss you but we won’t forget you. How can we when you will forever be a Canuck?