I feel that I am the luckiest man in the world, because I got to be Jude Roman Tysiak’s Dad.

It wasn’t necessarily an easy task, but every day he woke up under my roof and he was breathing, it made it a happy and bright day.

Jude saw the world in a different way than most people, some people would call it oppositional, others, like his Great Aunt Renee LeBlanc would call him “Mr. No”, but what was clear is that he marched to the beat of his own drum, and it didn’t matter who you were, a ski or soccer coach, a teacher a policeman, when Jude made up his mind about something, he was going to do it.

Jude was also a risk-taker and he was fearless.

I remember his first Club Championship at The Georgian Peaks Ski Club, where he grew up skiing. He was probably about 5 years old and had already been skiing for a couple years and his age group was having their first Club Championship, a ski race from top to bottom around some gates. Well, it didn’t surprise me, Jude won the Gold medal, as the fastest in his age category, he was just fearless and went for it.

Then he promptly got kicked off the ski race team. It seemed when Jude wanted to stop and go in for a hot chocolate and the coach said no, that didn’t work for Jude, so he would just go in for his Hot Chocolate.

So, we said maybe we should try out FreeStyle skiing, a much more relaxed and less structured sport and plus, it was really where all the cool kids hung out. With FreeStyle, you could go fast, but you also did jumps, rode rails and boxes, and style was a part of the sport…this all appealed to Jude, more danger and adrenalin, and as his friends know, he had style…he still went in for his Hot Chocolate’s when he wanted to, which was just a little more accepted in Freestyle.

So now Jude was a FreeStyle skier and he was asked if he wanted to compete in the Big Air Competition in the Club Championships and he said absolutely. The Big Air Competition is exactly just that, you start at the top of the hill and then you ski down, and most kids “check” their speed, which means they adjust and slow down a bit, then they hit this jump and try and get as high as possible, then land or stick the jump. All the kids are now checking their approach and hitting the jumps, then it was Jude’s turn and I am down the hill by the jump and I am videotaping…Jude of course being Jude, doesn’t check his speed and just goes for it and he hit that jump at full speed, he took massive air, certainly higher than every other kid, he then hit the landing and “yard sale’d” ski’s blew off, poles went flying and he is laying there without moving, and I am still videotaping, going holy shit, is he alive…so, I go over to him and he starts moving, and says “I am OK”, good he is OK. And I say “wow, that was some big ass air… that was amazing” and I asked him if he wanted to do a second jump, given you are allowed two attempts to jump and stick your landing, you are measured on both…and he said, “No, I am good, it is a Big Air competition, and I got the biggest”, so in his mind, he won, even if the judges docked him points for his yard sale and he got a silver or bronze…but that was Jude…he didn’t care about the medal, he wanted to be seen as the fastest, the highest, the toughest.

Then came the sport of Parkour and Free Running. This is a sport of climbing walls, jumping off buildings, doing flips off railings, vaulting off structures, etc. And in Toronto, the place to do it was Monkey Vault, actually out by our city house now between The Stockyards and  The Junction.

 Jude’s older brother Ross, whom we will talk about later, and his possie of friends, led by Sam Aurlick, and Jude’s pal Milan, were doing Parkour in the Brown School playground at recess and of course Jude followed his brother. But, of course in Jude style, he pushed it and you can call it fearless, or reckless, but we eventually got the call from Monkey Vault. Jude jumped off a high wall, bounced off the side of the soft landing bag and hit the floor and cracked his skull. He ended up being fine, there was no brain fluid leaking…but I am hoping you are all seeing a pattern…when parenting Jude, you were always braced for that call.

But it wasn’t just sport, adrenalin and risk-taking that defined Jude, it was Jude and his Friend’s…

Jude’s friend journey is really what ultimately defined him.

When he was young, he only needed one real friend and that first one was Harry Greenwood, John and Karra’s youngest… Karra was pregnant at the same time Currie was pregnant and given we were all hanging out together both at Muskoka Lakes Golf & Country Club and then The Georgian Peaks Ski Club, Harry and Jude became inseparable in those days.

It was never a dull moment with Jude and Harry and yes, they could be very naughty and they regularly traumatized Karra’s nanny’s …. Oh So many stories.., Harry, I am going to spare you the embarrassment here…but I will just say there was a story that I was saving for Jude’s wedding one day, “the Pooping down the vents of our Thornbury chalet” story,… so if anyone wants to hear that one, hit me up later and I would be happy to share the details.

After Currie and I split, when the boys were about 5 and a half and 8, the boys and I eventually moved to Poplar Plains Road, about  9 doors down from Brown School, where they were attending. Jude started hanging out with this tall, blonde, strong and cool Serbian kid, named Milan Dejanovic, who was also into Parkour and also went to Brown and lived right behind our house. I don’t want to tell you their urban parkour antics that these two, along with Ross, got into that they shared with me later. Climbing up sides of walls on to roof tops, climbing up billboards, construction cranes, etc.

At this time, we also started to spend the first half of our summers in Muskoka, where the boys were in all the MLGCC programs, tennis, swimming, sailing, golf…amazing days, but just a bit more structured and the second half of the summer in Thornbury, with very little agenda other than jumping off the Thornbury Pier, swimming in Georgian Bay and at SlabTown on the Beaver River and things like that. We joined the Royal Harbour Resort Health Club because they had an indoor salt-water pool, a hot tub, a sauna and a small gym, right on the Thornbury Harbour, and that became our second home. And then we included a week of camping up the Bruce Peninsula every August…starting first at Cypress Lake Campground, where you take a 2km hike to The Grotto on Georgian Bay, passing rattlesnakes, catching frogs and crayfish along the way. A beautiful part of the world with high steep rocky cliffs, pristine but cold water, caves and Grottos, that the boys just loved…this was a magical natural wonderland…they spent the days climbing those cliffs, of course jumping off the highest of the cliff about 65 feet in the air and then running around the campsites with their pocket knives and roasting marshmallows and eating Sean Kelly's Black Angus Ribeyes on the portable Weber…and from their we would take the ChiChiMan Ferry over to Manitoulin Island and go exploring, fishing, snorkelling, horseback riding, swimming in Bridle Veil Falls…it was a simpler, beautiful world that we were exploring and eventually they were  able to bring a pal. Sam Aurlick was our first guest and then we brought Milan, and we also had Mike and his son, Mika, join us who taught the boys to go even next level with their antics and their risk taking, and then eventually Mandy joined us on these camping trips.

After camping for a week or so we would be back chilling out in Thornbury and I remember this one sweaty hot night in August that we were sitting around the house and Jude heard kids playing Manhunt in the distance.

And Jude said to me, Dad, I am going to find those kids and I am going to play with them…I said great, just be careful…

Well, that was when Jude met Ryan Capeluck, and that was the start of a life long friendship…I think that initial night might have started with Jude fighting one of the local kids, to prove that no one was going to push him around, but Ryan could tell you that story better…I just recall that Ryan had this little mini-bike and Jude just thought that was the coolest and needed to hang with that kid.

The following summer we thought it would be good to send Jude to summer camp for a couple weeks and we decided on Muskoka Woods. Muskoka Woods is that kids camp up on Lake Rosseau, that was really a Country Club for kids. They could handle an Oppositional, rambunctious kid like Jude. But Jude didn’t want to go alone, he was all about hanging with a friend, so I asked Ryan’s Mom, Sarah Harpell if she was cool with Ryan attending with Jude and so they were off…the story’s from those two weeks were quite something…certainly they were very close to getting kicked out, but they regulated and managed to make it through and it bonded them even further.

Ryan introduced Jude to Xavier, who also became one of Jude’s closest friends and from there he started becoming part of that Thornbury gang…Jude couldn’t wait to get up to Thornbury on weekends or in August and Thornbury become Jude’s Happy Place.

At our Thornbury house we also added a pool table along with ping pong boards, and so after every Saturday night Steak night, supplied of course by Sean Kelly’s Black Angus Butcher shop, we would settle into some very long Kings Court ping pong battles or some poker pool, or both. Now we had a rule at our Thornbury house on those Saturday steak nights, whatever kids the boys were playing with that day, were invited for a proper sit-down steak dinner with us, which usually ended with ping pong and billiards. We also housed many of his friends for sleepovers in our attached apartment, so it was certainly a lively homefront.

However, life wasn’t all rosy, back in Toronto and at School, Jude struggled,..Jude is an extremely smart kid, and was well spoken…his communication skills were far ahead of his cohorts, probably thanks to his older sisters, Aiden and Quinn.

But I don’t want to sugar coat things, Jude struggled with self-regulation and executive functioning and that started showing itself more and more at school. Mental Health is a hard thing to define, but Jude certainly struggled with his place in the World and struggled with his own internal happiness and self being.  Currie, probably spent half her day working every service and mental health program in Toronto to get Jude the support he needed. She probably still is suffering PTSD from helping to support Jude.

And at the homefront, Jude took up a lot of the oxygen in the room, which was unfortunate for his siblings, Aiden, Quinn and Ross, but they understood  that Jude required more of their Mom’s and my time and they were generally supportive of this fact.

Currie could write an entire book on the programs throughout Ontario and into the US, about the Mental Health Support programs for kids that required extra needs in both schooling, navigating life, addiction to things like gaming and booze and drugs.

But that is a different talk, but it is important for all to know that life was not perfect and rosy and or easy for Jude, but there were magical moments, and many of those were when Jude was in Thornbury and when Jude was with his good friends.

So, after being in many of these programs, some residential and some not,  Jude was maturing and he came to me and begged me to help him. He just wanted to have a Regular High School Experience….he wanted to go to live in Thornbury and attend GBCS in Meaford with all his local Thornbury friends and he promised to try and finish his High School up there.

So, Mandy and I, along with a lot of support from the local community, made it happen. We had Jim, the local taxi driver on speed dial to get him to school if he missed the bus, we had Guardian’s mid-week looking after Jude, we had various therapists lined up to work with him, we had people like Season Leone, that runs Culinary Designs catering, that helped organize today, opened up an account for Jude if he was ever hungry he could just go in and get what he needed. And there were Jude’s friends like Vivian Slama, that invited Jude over to dinner at her house in Clarksburg most Tuesday nights. And of course we had a very accommodating and flexible school in GBCS, that worked hard to set up an environment for Jude’s success.

It wasn’t perfect, but Jude did get to experience a relatively regular high school experience and in perfect Jude style, he even hosted the Post-Prom Party for his graduating class at our house in Thornbury…and he hadn’t even completely graduated at that point.

So, during this high school time, we got to see a lot of smiles on Jude’s face.

During this period, the global pandemic hit and I got to base myself out of Thornbuy with Jude. We built a gym in our attached garage with squat racks, a heavy bag for Jude to punch away his frustrations, a hot tub, some dirt bikes for some Father Son bonding time, etc. and eventually Jude got a part-time job working at The Corner, thanks to Ryan’s Mom, Sarah Harpell.  While riding out the Pandemic in Thornbury and eventually graduating and working part time at The Corner Bar, once it was legal of course, we probably housed half of the teenagers of Thornbury, Meaford, Wasaga and Collingwood in our attached apartment, which really became Jude’s apartment.

But Jude was growing restless and the excitement of the big city and his Toronto friends were calling him. And Jude started hanging with his closest Toronto friend Sky and his gang and then about that time, I think it was Mayfair at Rosedale Park or through Sky’s posse of friends where Jude met what would become the love of his short life, Fiona Lang…a gorgeous, cool, polite and sweet teenager, slightly younger than Jude.

This, from my perspective, became one of Jude’s happiest times and he couldn’t wait to bring Fiona up to Thornbury to show her off to all his Thornbury friends. It was great to see Jude and Fiona together at many dinners and hangouts in both our Thornbury and Toronto homes. And of course he loved taking his new Dodge Challenger to pick up Fiona at her high school…he was so proud and happy.

So, we settled into our Junction house that Mandy and I bought at the early part of the pandemic and Jude started some part-time jobs while he was organizing his plans to go to Fanshaw College in London this coming September and to live with his friends, Xavier and Carter, that were already living there.

It was also good to see Jude achieve some milestones and some wins, which started to build his confidence and certainly good to see him maturing. Jude could be the most interesting man at the dinner table, when he wanted to be. He loved telling stories and he always came up with cool ideas about things. He also got his official OSSD diploma, he got his G1 and then his G2, he got his Smart Serve, he got his first car, based on a business plan that he presented me.

We also took a family trip to Cuba for Mandy’s birthday in May of last year and not only did we invite Ross and Jude, we also invited their girlfriends, Ross brought Cameron, and Jude brought Fiona.

This was a trip of a lifetime for me…to have Mandy, and my boys and their girlfriends all together for a week. It was so great to see them growing up and being mature and happy young men. There are so many great stories that I would love to share with you sometime, but one that melted my heart and Mandy’s…was on Mandy’s birthday, May 3rd, we all met on our hotel terrace, right on this beautiful long sandy beach, with gentle bright blue waves lapping the shoreline and palm trees swaying, and we were starting our night with a glass of Cava and toasting Mandy before going off to one of the resort restaurants with a good bottle of Rioja and Jude went over to Mandy and presented her a birthday gift of a beautiful straw hat that he bought for her locally, he hugged her and he told her that he “loved” her, in front of all of us.

Wow, this was quite a surprise, not only the gift, but those words. Jude was never good with change and he never really accepted any of my new girlfriends and it took him a while to come around to Mandy.

He would say to me later though that he was so happy that I had “re-connected” with Mandy and that she was in my life…clearly we were happy together and very much in love,  but he would also say, with her clean eating and everything organic lifestyle, and all her physical fitness regimes and yoga that she was getting me into, that I would be living a long life and I would never be lonely…so he loved Mandy for offering me this happiness.

Anyhow, we got back to Toronto and Jude got his first Toronto job in a very cool jazz lounge in the Junction, called My House, owned by a great and supportive and wonderful person, named Judith Santos…she has a son slightly older than Jude, so she understands young men… she worked Jude hard, but was also easier than she probably needed to be on him, but it was great opportunity and Jude learnt a lot.

Jude then got a job at a local dispensary, which he really enjoyed, it was an easier pace than being as Servers Assistant and he liked talking to people, educating them and ultimately selling them stuff.

In about February of this year, Jude took a lot of the money he earned at both jobs and spent it on a tattoo, a Trinity, the symbol of Free Ukraine, that he helped design with a tattoo artist named Zadia. Zadia works out of the GlassBird tattoo parlour on Dundas Street West in The Junction of Toronto, right around the corner of our city house. Jude loved that tattoo and he was quite proud of it, not only because it looked cool, but it represented his Ukrainian heritage on my side. By the way, I have spoken to Zadia and when she gets back from her trip in Bali in mid-June, I am getting that same Trident tattoo from her.

Well the dispensary job didn’t last long, he probably had a few weeks as the new employee, and then he got the call  from Sky in February of this year to go on a ski trip to Canmore and Sunshine in Alberta. Sky’s Grand Parents paid for Sky and three of his buddies every year, so Jude was off. He said it was another trip of a lifetime and couldn’t wait to go back.

Given Jude’s immediate vacation at the very beginning of the new job, the dispensary wasn’t too eager to get him back on the work calendar, so unfazed Jude  updated his resume and ended up securing his first sales job on his own.

He was selling car detailing kits, and on his first shift in early April he sold a large amount, more than any new recruit on their first day…he was so proud, his colleagues were giving him a lot of high fives  and when he got home that night we were high fiving and hugging each other and I was calling him a closer and telling him “ to go get a coffee, cause coffee is for closers”…anyhow,  later that week, Jude had his heart attack.

So, you now all know a little bit more about our Jude’s life, seen through my eyes. But no story of Jude, can be complete without talking about Jude’s older brother, Ross Wasyl Tysiak.

Ross was absolutely the perfect big brother to Jude. Ross was born smiling, happy and very calm and confident. And he was so happy to welcome this little brother of his into his life…they were inseparable…first it was just playing in the water at the cottage, then skiing, then parkour, then trampolineing, etc. etc. …Ross doesn’t have an egotistical bone in his body, so even with all of Ross’ early achievements, which he would kill me if I went into them now, his brother was never jealous, because Jude knew that Ross was always in Jude’s corner and he always had Jude’s back. Then as Ross grew older and developed his own friend group, which is really akin to my friend group, more like brothers, Ross continued to include Jude, and Ross’ friends also embraced Jude…whether it was Queen’s homecomings, or EDM concerts or just playing ping pong in Thornbury, they always happily included Jude. So, Ross thank you for being such a great big brother to your little bro, Jude.

Ross and I made an important pact at our Junction house about an hour after feeling Jude’s heart beat for the last time. We talked about there being two directions to go after going through a family tragedy like this, we could go downhill and wallow, or we could rise and we can work hard at being the best versions of ourselves as possible so that we could build a Tysiak Family Legacy that Jude would be proud of…so I challenge his friends out there, to join us as we soar for Jude.

And for my final words, I am pleased to share with you that the Town has just planted a tree in Jude’s honour, just east of the tennis courts, overlooking the Bay and with Georgian Peaks in the background.

And to go along with that tree, I want to share an old Ukrainian tradition, that my Aunt Iryna Revutsky, the wife of my Dad’s youngest brother, Alex Tyssiak, shared with me recently. Iryna by the way was my rock that helped me be strong through the entire ICU experience. Anyhow, she said back in the old country, people would regularly go the cemetery where their loved ones were laid to rest and they would bring a bunch of flowers and a bottle of their favourite spirit. They would visit every grave site of those loved ones and lay a flower and pour out a shot for who they were visiting and one for themselves…so, my plan is to visit Jude’s tree often and I welcome his friends and family to do the same and to always keep Jude in your hearts…

And on that note, I will thank you all for coming today to help us Celebrate our Jude’s extraordinary and full life.

Thank you!