My most vivid memory of John Harkness is when we were together on a Fipresci jury in Miami in 2000. During the festival, I and the other three members of the jury were completely at odds with him on almost every issue, which extended to food. He walked out of a Japanese restaurant where we were having our first meeting, by announcing he was going to a burger joint for real food. He also angered a gay man, who was working for the festival, by making homophobic remarks. Our jury began to get worried that we would never agree on a film to give our prize to because his tastes seemed so different from the rest of us. However, at our last meeting, at a great restaurant which even satisfied John's appetite, we had the most stimulating and pleasant discussion, all of us coming to the same conclusion that Oskar Roehler's Die Unberührbare (2000) was the best film in the competition.

John and I used to post on the same message board for many years. A very intimidating guy, but very smart and funny. He gets major kudos in my book for the very finest (and shortest) critique of "The Shawshank Redemption": "'Beaches' for straight men."

Nobody ever accused John of suffering fools at all, let alone gladly, yet he proved amazingly generous in sharing his time and talent. Hopefully someone will work on pulling together his decades of sharp and pithy writing into one volume so that his work can live beyond journalism's usual expiry dates.

I knew John from our days at Carleton University's Film Studies department. It was the early days of Film Studies in Canada. We subsequently both moved to Toronto and coincidentally to Yonge and St. Clair where we both remained for 25 years, bumping into one another on Yonge St. regularly on our way to the subway or at the Second Cup. Sometimes I would try to argue with him about one of his NOW reviews, and he'd stand there looking confused, and then finally just shrug his shoulders and shake his head. He was resolute to say the least. Depending on the day, he could be either grumpy and just nod his head at you, or warm and ebullient, stopping to tell you the latest news about something that excited him. I phoned him a few times over the years to ask for some help on certain subjects, and he was always generous with his time and advice. I left Toronto two years ago so hadn't seen him for awhile, and am greatly saddened by his untimely passing. I love the picture posted here of him, the warm quality that characterized who he was beneath the often gruff exterior. I wish him peace...