Remembering my older brother Monte

My brother Monte (George Montegu Black III), died nearly 10 years ago, but arises constantly in my thoughts and dreams, always pleasantly and true to life. There were just the two of us in our family, and he was four years older, not a great gap among adults, but a huge difference between children.

It was among the greatest good fortunes I have had that my brother, unlike other older brothers in families we knew, never abused his superior strength or even his worldlier gift for repartee. I knew other boys whose older brothers were terrible bullies, and so understood from earliest days the extent of my good luck.

I tried to repay his generosity with purposeful solidarity in the one-sided debates that arise between children and their parents in any family, and a strong bond developed between us that never weakened, even though we rarely lived in the same place after he went away to school when I was 10. After that, schools, universities and careers kept us generally in different cities, apart from holidays, until I returned to Toronto from Quebec in 1974, when I was 30.

Remembering my older brother Monte

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