Stuart Duncan

Another one gone. Getting tired of friends dropping like leaves in the fall...

Another friend of mine. Frig, what’s going on here. I guess it’s that time of life. Stu was one of the funniest guys I ever met. There were very few discussions with Stu that didn’t end with uproarious laughter. He was big and fat, and a smoker, but full of joviality and self confidence, and he was smart. But mostly he liked to have fun.

I met Stu at Mitel, a company that I worked for in the 1980s and 1990s. We became fast pals, going for after-work beers and laughs on a regular basis. Among other things, he was a genius at making up uncomplimentary nicknames for people. A rotund colleague named Corkie was labeled Porkie; a colleague known for exaggeration named Arnie was labeled Blarney; a large colleague named Teena was labeled Tuna; another colleague named Duffis was labeled Doofus, and there had to be half a dozen more that I can no longer remember.

We were old guys (late 20s, early 30s) who still wanted to play hockey, so in the winters we played outdoor hockey when we could. His best friends in those days were Peter Young and Ronny Finn. We both liked dogs - his first one I remember was Brewster, who he called Brewer - that dog lasted through his first two marriages. While at Mitel, he ended his first marriage (it was difficult for him), and remarried - at that time he lost a lot of weight, and looked fit.

At some point in 1988(?), I had a job interview at Telesat Canada, got an offer, but decided against it - I told Stu about it, he applied and got the job. He was a writer there for a short while, then got into sales, learned what he needed there (in various ways :-) and went out on his own, in competition with Telesat. He made his first million that way with his company, which became 5DTV.

He was two years older than me, and when he turned 30, I told him that after the age of 30, a man thinks of his mortality every day for the rest of his life - he often later cursed me for that.

We didn’t see much of each other after that; he had his son with his second wife, and I started a family at about the same time. Still managed to get together occasionally for beers, though.

When he was running 5DTV, in 2001, we reconnected. I had been laid off from my tech job, and he offered me office space and seed money to start my own company - a very generous thing to do for a friend in a spot. I ended up getting a few offers at the same time, so I went in another direction. But I’d never forgotten his generosity and kindness.

In 2010(?), he invited my wife and kids to a Senator’s game in the owner’s box. We had a nice time with him and his third wife. He was back in town in 2015 or 2016, and he called me up to go to a Leafs game here in Ottawa - of course he managed to get tickets right beside the Leafs’ bench. They were terrible that year, and he wore a blue-and-white Mexican zippered wrestling mask, and our pictures were in the Ottawa Sun the next day. I wish I could find that (one of many times he was in the paper)! Never a dull moment with Stu.

He soon went out to California, and we lost touch again, that is until we started our war on Facebook. I was a liberal, and he was a liberal-turned-far-right-conservative (he had a big problem with Justin Trudeau; understandable, I guess). He came back to Ottawa, so we had brunch, and there was that big smile on his face, laughing at our online war. We had some laughs that day, but that was the last time I saw him. The online war continued on and off until he went quiet in early 2022. Some time later, I reached out again, and found that he had passed away several months earlier. Stu left a hole in many lives to be sure, and the world is quieter without him - far less laughter.

https://www.hpmcgarry.ca/memorials/stuart-duncan/4937663/