Nicolas Parenteau, a friend of mine, died on Friday in Chiang Mai. He skidded off his motorcycle in unforgiving Thai traffic, on a chaotic road that terrified me a thousand times, and died in hospital ten hours later.

A fellow Canadian working through CUSO with Burmese exiles in Thailand, Nic was a good person in the purest senses of the word. A gifted agriculturist, he was most fascinated by digging his fingers into fertile earth, and dedicated his final year to giving long-downtrodden people new means to feed themselves. I didn't know him as well as I should have, but I spent a fair portion of my final months in Thailand hanging out with him. He was kind, generous, devoted, funny and full of cheer. Were you to describe the kind of person the world needs to see more often, Nic would be a fine place to start. A vast many people, myself included, are richer for having known him and poorer for having known him so briefly.