BOB LANE, INC.
INVERNESS, FLORIDA

, a Philosophy major, a TA twice, a columnist, an author, an actor, and a teacher of literature and philosophy. It’s been a wonderful life. Robert (Bob) Lane began his career at Malaspina in the old hospital on Kennedy Street where he established himself as a committed teacher. Throughout his career as an English, Creative Writing, Arts, and Philosophy instructor, he has devoted many hours both in and outside the classroom. Robert Lane is a great contributor and builder of cultural life at Malaspina and in Nanaimo. In addition to his regular teaching duties, he has been an active participant in the recruitment and advising of high school students, and also participated in theatre productions, poetry readings, and art shows. Robert Lane founded the Vancouver Island Literary Society and brought emerging poets to Malaspina. He was also the founder and managing editor of Island, a literary magazine. When Malaspina moved to Fifth Street, Mr. Lane was the Special Events Coordinator and was responsible for all the arts activity on campus. Robert Lane has contributed significantly to programming at Malaspina. He designed, supported, and coordinated new interdisciplinary courses while pursuing his interest in philosophy at the University of California-Santa Barbara and Simon Fraser University. Subsequently, Mr. Lane founded the Philosophy Department at Malaspina. In addition to supporting his students, he supported his colleagues by holding many administrative positions, including Area Chair (today’s equivalent of Dean). We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats. scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumber the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. “One of the attractions of the UU approach to religion and life is caught in the assertion that divinity and spirit are to be found not through blind faith but through finding and sending down roots to the deepest part of one’s unique self. As is true in botany, those roots spread out into the wider community and can nourish us and give us a healthy life. How do we know when we are living in the best place for those roots to grow? In so much as we do indeed “grow a soul” we should consider carefully the garden in which that soul grows.” - Bob Lane A Tribute to Bob Lane I arrived at Malaspina College (as it then was) in 1975, the last year we were in the old hospital.  One of the first things I noticed was how often the name Bob Lane came up (usually in an expression of approval and affection, but not invariably), although he was nowhere to be seen, since he was away on leave studying philosophy at Simon Fraser University.  So long before I met the man, I had concluded his was a presence of some stature among the faculty. This is not the place to list Bob Lane's various accomplishments at Malaspina, even if I knew them all.  What matters most to me about the man is not this or that list of books, positions, articles and so on (impressive and important as that list is) nor even the high quality of his teaching (to which thousands of students can attest better than I), but the spirit of his relationship to the college. Bob Lane has always seemed to me to personify the highest meaning of that overused word No, my esteem was based more a sense that I (and others) could always count on him to think clearly about a picture larger than the canvas delineated by his own department or area and then to act calmly and firmly on the basis of that rational consideration and discussion.  Perhaps that is  what made him so often in demand as an MCFA executive member (especially President). And no faculty member ever possessed such an unerring nose for crap detection.  Of course, this was in the days before we all became totally desensitized to bullshit. But the major reason why I have always been happy to have Bob Lane as a colleague is that no one I know around the place ever cared more for the total college as an institution of value.  Nowadays, when we are all encouraged to pursue our private scholarly agendas and are locked into aggressive or defensive departmental turf wars which incite us constantly to complain about the university-college as something oppressive or stupid or whatever, a statement like that must sound hopelessly sentimental.  But there was a time, corny or not, when what some people most cared about was Malaspina College itself (rather than their own little corner of it) and when they were prepared to work to make the whole place as fine as it could possibly be.  Bob Lane stood at the head of that contingent, now almost totally decimated. Anyway, the recent news that Bob Lane is retiring at the end of this semester makes me sad, not for him but for us.  This is not just another retirement.  For Bob Lane, unlike an old timer or two I could mention, embodies a great deal of what used to (and what still should) matter most at Malaspina, and his departure leaves us all that much more impoverished.  What he represents is, given what we have turned ourselves into, irreplaceable. We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats. scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumber the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.