People who know me may have heard me talk about my larger-than-life french teacher, Monsieur Larrivee. He liked and definitely cared about all his students, though regularly got irritated with me not for talking too much but for not talking enough. He had the shyest kid in class stand on their desk and shout. He had nicknames for so many of his students; Alexis was High-maintenance, Josh was Diva, Emerald was Vert (which means green in french), Liv was Blondie. The two Iranian kids were his Atomic Bombs, which often brought him complaints about being racist, but in fact he was just being hilarious, and he always made clear that if he did offend anyone we were free to call him out on it. During the first class he told us that it was okay to swear in class, just so long as we swore in french, and after every class he would bid us play in traffic. Sometimes I thought he was a little cruel, sometimes I thought he was downright hilarious, but I realized after that semester that I'd never learned more at school than in that class.
It's worth mentioning, probably, that Larrivee had the largest collection of frogs ever. Over eight hundred. He doesn't even like frogs. The classroom was absolutely stuffed with stuffies and knickknacks and posters and pictures of frogs everywhere. This started because when he first began teaching, way back in the seventies, he told his first class he had, "Yes, I'm a frog," the racial slur for frenchman. At the end of the semester, as a joke, the class presented him with a frog as a gift. And that continued up until last year, when Larrivee retired and gave all his frogs and various other items to students of his.
We were among his last classes he ever taught, and not only that, we were his favourite that year. He often told us that. Everyone who'd ever had Larrivee for a teacher loved him, even if he could be a little harsh at times. He told us at the beginning of the semester that by the end he'd have an adjective for all of us, and he told us at the end. Mine was "intellectual". I'd never associated that word with myself before, and now I realize that it's both flattering and fitting.
He retired last year at the end of the first semester.
A couple days ago, while vacationing in Japan, he had a heart attack and died.
Of all the things that could have killed him. He was old, but he was healthy. He'd walked to school from his place every day, and I'm sure he stayed just as healthy after he retired. After battling cancer on multiple occasions, taking chemotherapy three or four times, after all that, he died of a heart attack in Japan.
Larrivee may have seemed like little more than a bitter old frenchman, but he wasn't. He had a fair amount of wisdom with all that, and if not wisdom, he had so many stories to be telling. He really was so proud of his skill for storytelling, and he valued auditory intelligence above all other intelligences. There were a lot of stories he never finished telling us.
He was going to accompany a bunch of frenchies to France this year on their field trip.
Larrivee touched the life of every student he ever taught. He will be deeply missed by so many people.
Rest in peace, Monsier Larrivee. Reposez en paix. Vous allez nous manquer.
P.S Larrivee was possibly the only man in the world who would go in front of a school on Terry Fox day, talk about having cancer, and say we need to laugh at it more. In a similar strain, he also once told us, his Conversations class, that it was healthy to laugh at death. It may seem in bad taste, but I have to fully agree. Me and my friend Erin shared our fair share of tears today, and then spent the rest of the day laughing at memories of his class. Remember when he called Jacey Jesus? Remember in improv, Courtney's mime? Remember, how he used to look at Caleb and just go, "Espece de...." (Sometimes he'd finish the sentence with "espece de merde" - this was what he said when someone in the class was irritating him - it was usually Caleb. He was also fond of calling us "les vaches espagnols" if we were speaking particularly bad french, or just looking at us and saying "Vachement" if we'd said something particularly stupid). Remember that time when.... remember that time when...... the list went on and on. So I'm going to enjoy the memories I have of Larrivee, as an appreciation for the wonderful individual he was, and I'm sure he himself would approve of this coping method.
P.S.S If you never had the privilege of meeting Monsieur Larrivee, I found this ten minute audio bit online from one of his former students, and I personally can't listen to it again because I'm going to start bawling like a baby again, but I think it will help other people understand what he was actually like beyond his reputation.
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