Gordie Howe and Muhammad Ali took part of my childhood with them when they died - Michael's essay
Early on the morning they buried Muhammad Ali in Louisville, Kentucky, Gordie Howe died at the home of his doctor son, Murray, in Sylvania, Ohio. The man from Floral, Saskatchewan was 88.
In personal terms, Ali and Howe had little in common.
The one, a descendant of slaves, was whipsaw smart, who dared his government to throw him in jail over the principle that he refused to kill "poor brown people."
The other, a hulking farm boy from a Canadian Prairie town, who dominated his sport for half a century but kept his inarticulated politics to himself.
In the cosmos of sports, they shared many of the same attributes. Both were pictures of fluid grace in their chosen field, Howe on the ice, Ali in the ring.
They both liked to hit. Ali made his living with his uncanny ability to punish an opponent while avoiding the pain of reprisal.
Howe was as good with his fists as he was with his stick. I can remember reading about the horrible night in 1959 when he dismantled a New York Ranger tough guy named Lou Fontinato, breaking his nose and dislocating his jaw.
He was known for what hockey elders called the Gordie Howe Hat Trick; a goal, an assist and a fight in the same game. The first time Henri Richard played against him, he got a Howe elbow to the face.
But nobody could play hockey like him. Ever.
Ali represented something in the national temper of his country, the contemporaneous growing movements against the war in Vietnam and the urgent command for civil rights reform.
Gordie Howe, on the other hand, represented the greatest display of talent in the national sport that to a discernible extent defined us as a people.
I grew up through the teenage years in the NHL era of The Original Six. My favorite team was the Detroit Red Wings, mostly because of the Production Line of Howe, Abel and Lindsay. Detroit had the best skaters, the smartest playmakers, the toughest enforcers.
Later when I went to a famous hockey high school called St. Mike's, I switched allegiance to the Toronto Maple Leafs. After all, Dave Keon was in my French class and I saw Frank Mahovlich every day in the cafeteria.
But the colour photograph of Gordie Howe stayed up on my bedroom wall.
When a sports idol works his way into the emotional weave of a teenager, the magic of that relationship lingers long after high school years.
Every generation has to learn to cope with loss, especially the loss of the childhood hero. People of a later generation have gone through it this year with the deaths of Prince and David Bowie.
Losing Muhammad Ali and Gordie Howe in the same week feels as if an important element of my youth has been amputated, whisked away, leaving behind misted dreams and fading images.
On Friday morning, I recalled the story of a conversation between Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the US senator and Mary McGrory the journalist; both deeply Irish, both mourning the loss of John F. Kennedy.
McGrory told Moynihan, "Pat, we'll never laugh again."
Replied Moynihan: "Of course we will Mary; we'll just never be young again."
Click the 'play' button above to hear Michael's essay.