To: Matthew Dorrell, The Cadre Travel Bureau From: Kent J. Bruyneel, Editor-In-Chief In Re: What We Have Lost

Ah, Matt, my boy, it is a hard rain falling out my window and I am laid low with grief and sadness: the King is dead.

The great Al Waxman, one of Canada’s finest small screen stars is gone. He has died suddenly at a tender age from an appar- ently routine operation. A true Canadian tragedy.

My earliest memories of Waxman were of him in his crown- ing role, as the loveable King of Kensington. Don’t remember? Yes, you are so young, and I am so old and full of wisdom for you on this the cultural event of our past century from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: Al Waxman, King of Kensington.

The theme song grabbed you by the balls right off the bat: to wit, “when he walks down the street, he smiles at everyone, and everyone that he meets says ‘he’s King of Kensington.’” Now I don’t know if you have been to Kensington market, but seeing as you are The Cadre’s award winning travel columnist I should like to describe it to you.

Kensington Market is a. kind of Charlottetown Farmer’s Market on uncut cocaine: gone mad on the blow and the ability to sell anything. The place is as electric as an activist’s bathroom. I lived around the corner from Kensington Market for about a month and half one summer, so I know. The apartment where I lived had no air conditioner and the windows barely opened and I was always always sweating and I thought for awhile about just going back to Vancouver, which is not so-urban and mostly not so hot. But the thing was, by then, I was addicted to cheese ends.

It’s true. I would line-up with the other junkies around three in the afternoon, at the World of Cheese, which is not the actual name but represents the spirit of the kinds of places I was frequent- ing, and dreaming about.

I called the cheese guy sir; he called me Kent.

Usually I would get one (sometimes three) a day, always try- ing something new, whatever they had. Giving all worlds of cheese a chance. Or more specifically the world of cheese ends the greatest chance as I would stroll through the streets and fondle clothes and smell foods stuffs, and love the world. All for two bucks an end.

Cheese ends, as if you didn’t know, are the ends of the cheese not suitable for slices. They are that part of the particular block that no part-time cheese-eater will even consider. But this, I am telling you, is the meat of the cheese: where the flavour goes to die. Like the last drink of red wine.

Anyway, by a month into the cheese in the afternoon, unbe- lievable unstoppable heat all the rest of my waking and not-sleeping hours, I had decided that I should stop eating so much cheese. It pro- motes heavy perspiration and makes even a small man hard to cohabitate with, and as we well know, I am far from a small man. The bigger problem, however, was that by then I spent so much of every afternoon in the market almost invariably singing “King of Kensington” only semi-audibly past the local merchants as I walked, endlessly walked, that I felt an obligation to them. They needed me as any monarchy needs its ruler.

And I was a good King. I was benevolent and jovial. And in sweatpants. Just like Al. One day at the cheese store while I was waiting my turn, humming and not paying attention to anything, the counter man interrupted me, and said, in the aggressive style of a man who spent his entire day around food he couldn’t look at, never mind eat, “hey, you there, ahh... King of Kensington. You’re up!”

My eyes welled up, which I was used to because I had moved recently to the Belgian Cheeses and they produce intense

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