The following is a tribute to Marc Roberts, The Journal’s distribution manager and long-time partner, written by his daughter Laura.
On Monday, March 29, 2022, my dad passed away at St. Joseph’s Hospice after a difficult journey with bile duct cancer that began on Thanksgiving 2019. He was 58. As with everything, he braved this all with smiles and jokes. He stayed positive, not because he expected a miracle, but because he didn’t see the point in worrying about things he couldn’t fix. His motto for two years was, “It is what it is.” He also loved, “You do the best you can with what you’ve got.” He was (unsurprisingly) beloved by the oncology and palliative nurses, many of whom couldn’t believe how positive he still was. Even in his final weeks, he joked as much as he could with the nurses at the hospice.
He didn’t tell many people that he was sick, not because it was a secret, but because he wanted to live as normally as he could for as long as he could. He never wanted people to worry about him or treat him differently. He just wanted to keep working at the Sarnia Journal, a job that he truly loved, for as long as possible, and spend all the time he could with his family.
Anyone who knew him could see that the things he valued most in life were family and hard work, in that order. Through this whole experience, he worried and cared about his wife and children more than he ever did himself.
Words could never be enough to explain how incredible my dad was, and how much I loved him. He was the bravest person I knew, the strongest person I knew, the smartest person I knew, the funniest person I knew, and much more. All of these things, all at once.
I’ll miss him so, so much, as will my brother Jordan, my mom Sue, his sisters Jaclyn and Edyn, and so many more people. Again, nothing I could say measures up to how I feel. He meant the world to us, and I know we meant the world to him too.
July 3rd 1963 March 28th 2022
Nos plus sincères sympathies à la famille et aux amis de Marc Harris Roberts July 3rd 1963 March 28th 2022..
Décès pour la Ville:Sarnia, Province: Ontario