Saddened to learn of Joe Garcea’s passing. He was a kind and thoroughly decent person. A thread with a very short story of how I will remember him https://twitter.com/usaskpolitics/status/1327012166218752000

I did my undergrad in political science at the University of Saskatchewan and worked as a departmental assistant for three of those years. Mostly this meant photocopying, returning professors’ library books, and walking documents over to the registrar’s office

Occasionally though I got to do fun things. One such job was cleaning out Professor Garcea’s office, a trove of papers and books and piles of everything you could imagine

I took on the task with gusto, tossing, sorting and creating a file system for all of his documents. Joe couldn’t have been nicer and generously praised the end result. I was delighted.

Nearly 10 years later, when I was working in the federal immigration dept, I ran into him at a conference. He remembered me. He told me my file system was still in place, with all my handwritten tabs. He told me it changed his life (maybe a stretch but kind of him to suggest).

They say can tell a lot about people by how they treat admin and secretarial staff. By that standard, Joe was the best of the best.

When I eventually decided to go back to school and get a PhD, Joe encouraged me and would ask how things were going whenever we crossed paths. I’ll remember him as the prof who treated me with the same respect whether I was delivering a conference paper or taking out his trash.

Condolences to Joe’s family and colleagues. He will be missed.