Benjamin MacGeorge Smith

Our hearts are broken. We thank you all so much for your love and support here today, on a day we could have never imagined. We’d like to tell you about our Ben, the Ben who will be always in our hearts.

As a baby and toddler in Regina, Saskatchewan, Ben was so easy to love. Open-hearted, happy. We called him “Benjamino our Bambino”. When we moved to Halifax into the Fleming Park neighbourhood, he made fast friends with his buddy Mitchell, and our wonderful neighbours the MacLellan kids. He played basketball and lacrosse, and swam for the Waeg Waves in the summers. He loved Star Wars, Captain Underpants , and to draw funny cartoons,

School was easy for him, and he made good marks. He learned how to sail, and spent summer days on the Arm. He moved through all the swimming badges and passed courses to be a swimming teacher and a life guard, and followed that up with a part time and summer jobs at the Spryfield pool and at day camps at both the pool and Rockingstone Heights School. He was a natural teacher who kids took to instantly.

He spent several summers at Big Cove Camp outside Pictou, and adored it. In nature and among friends, he felt whole and content.

Ben was loving, and well-loved.

It is tempting to say Ben was this type of person, or that type of person, to try and sum up his personality in a few words. But Ben was like all of us. He was complex, and he was still growing and developing. So instead of thinking of Ben as “this or that” we invite you instead to think of him as “this and that.”

He was a loving, kind, creative life-force, and could also be moody. He had a huge heart and could also be self-absorbed. He was a romantic, but also broke a few hearts along the way, including his own. Sometimes he was the class clown, and at other times was quiet and thoughtful. He liked 90s gangster rap as well as complex jazz. In Junior High he referred to the first Led Zeppelin album, which was introduced to him by Uncle Mark, as “weirdly awesome”.

He bought used clothes but dreamed of making big money in the music industry. He was a poet who wrote the beautiful words in today’s order of service, and yet he could sometimes be insensitive to others. He was a person who was often smart and pragmatic, but at the same time did not always make good decisions. He was careful about what he ate, going through phases of zero sugar and carbs, and yet the circumstances of his death are evidence that he was not always so fastidious.

In other words, he was this... and that. A 6 foot 2 package of contradiction and utter charm.

Despite his flippant and funny demeanour, please know that Ben was deeply sensitive. The other day, we found a scrap of paper in his Halifax bedroom with these words: “My skin is porous. I hear life in chorus.” This shows a kind of growing self-awareness, and he was working hard on that. He wanted so much to move through these difficult years between adolescence and true adulthood.

Ben lived in Toronto for the last four years, so we took great comfort in spending time with his wonderful friends in Toronto this past week. Ben’s lovely friend Raven, beautiful on the inside and the outside, told us that she called him “the sun” and that she’ll carry his warmth within her always. She told us he wanted us to be proud of him, but that he wanted to do it alone, and she felt that was a dangerous mentality to have, this reluctance to ask for help or support.

In Toronto, Ben worked at the YMCA as a lifeguard and swim teacher, and also at a restaurant in the kitchen. He arrived on time, worked hard and was well-liked. At the same time, he worked on his own music.

We know Ben would be so sorry to see how his choices led to this day, and know that he would have deeply regretted our pain. Science will eventually tell us what happened the day Ben passed away of an accidental overdose. But we will never know why.

We have to accept there are questions that will never have answers. As loving parents, we will always ask ourselves if there was something we could have done to prevent what happened. Many friends have moved to reassure us in recent days, and we thank you for that.

To Ben’s old friends, friends from happier times, please know that he treasured your friendships. His room at our home still has notes, mementos and pictures from John W MacLeod, ES, Sacred Heart, JL Ilsley, and Citadel High. To his Big Cove friends near and far, know that he loved the times he spent with you at camp, and that he loved you too.

Our beautiful daughter Katie was a beloved big sister to Ben. He played with her for hours as a toddler, tagged along with her at the Waeg as a little boy, and looked up to her as a teenager. They had a tight bond that can never be broken, and our hearts ache for our Katie today. We want her to know that our love for her and our pride is infinite.

Ben’s dearly departed grandfather John Murtagh used to say that we don’t own our children; we merely have the privilege of raising them and loving them.

Raising our Ben was both a joy and a privilege. We lament the future missed, the potential unfulfilled, the adulthood that he will never enjoy, but we are oh so thankful for our 22 brief years with our Ben.

Poem by Ben

Thursday 2012

I am a vessel for the cosmos

I am all points on the infinite matrix

The blood on the canvas

An opening into the dark passage

A spot of dirt on your skin

The shell of the universe

All contents within

The black shadow that follows day

The waves of energy that give life

The tower and the rift

An observer

A creator

An unconscious volunteer

I will be spread, condensed, diffused and reborn

With a few exceptions along the way

New Light - Lyrics for original song, written in Ben’s memory by friend Avery Dakin

There was a wave that swallowed you,

That ground the sand in divine tempo with the moon.

And maybe you were there.

There was far-off thunder. There was new light.

And maybe you were there.

I wonder, in darkness, where the light goes.

I wonder, in darkness, where the light goes.

And where matter, indestructible, will show itself again.

* * * * * * * * * *

Benjamin MacGeorge Smith, much loved by family and friends, passed away Monday, April 16, 2018, in Toronto. Ben liked to make his friends laugh and liked to listen to their concerns. He was a thoughtful, deep-feeling person with a love of music and the visual arts. Sadly, he had little more than 22 years among us; he died of an accidental opioid overdose. Our dear boy was born in Regina on January 29, 1996. The family moved to Halifax when he was four so he and his sister could be closer to their grandparents. Ben loved so many outdoor activities – swimming, hiking, running and canoeing. He adored his time at Big Cove Camp -- first as a camper and later as a counsellor. He was also a good student, graduating from Citadel High with Honours and obtaining a medal as the top student in grade 12 in media studies in his graduating year, 2014. Ben studied at Ryerson University in Toronto before he left school to pursue the arts. He supported that work with jobs as a lifeguard, swimming instructor and most recently in a restaurant. Ben is survived by his parents, Sandy Smith and Sue Murtagh; his sister, Katie; his grandmother Greta Murtagh, and an extended loving family including Anne Murtagh Coffin and Mark Coffin; Ruth and Earl Gordon, children Hannah and Nathaniel; Peter Murtagh and Marianne Minaker, daughter Sophie; Wendy Bethune, children Allison Cooper and Mark Bethune; Pam Bulpin, children Rich Bulpin and Debbie Martin; special cousins the Petrie family in England. The funeral service will be held at J.A. Snow Funeral Home on Lacewood Drive in Halifax, Friday, April 27th at 2 pm. Reception to follow. Memorial donations may be made to Big Cove Camp (YMCA of Halifax-Dartmouth, Residential Summer Camps) or the charity of your choice. Friends in Toronto will remember him with an exhibit of his visual artworks on Saturday, April 28th at the Black Cat Artspace.