Ted Kennedy's funeral is on television right now but I can't watch it. This has been such a sad year with so many deaths that I thought I would just write about him from a Canadian perspective.

I have always thought of the Kennedy brothers as being part of my generation but actually they were more my mother's generation. Ted was the youngest brother and was only 36 when Robert, his last surviving brother was killed. The Kennedys had and have wealth beyond the dreams of most of the rest of us. After Robert's murder, it would have been quite understandable for Ted to take that wealth and live behind barred gates in seclusion for the rest of his life. He could have become very self-indulgent like Howard Hughes or Michael Jackson. For a time, he did live a very wild life-style but soon found out that this was not the way he wanted to be remembered.

Perhaps because of his three children and his innumerable nieces and nephews, he decided that drinking to excess and womanizing was not the best example to set so he really settled down to make a positive impact on his generation.

He was called the "liberal lion" by some and, even when the far right held power in the US, he was not afraid to push for reform in the areas of women's rights and policies to help the poor. This did not make him very popular with some but I felt he was courageous and determined to make life better for those who had little or no influence to speak for themselves.

Ted Kennedy was surely a flawed hero. No-one who lived through the 1960s will ever forget the tragedy of Chappaquiddick and the death of a beautiful young woman. I feel this is the main reason that he would never have become president of the US. Nonetheless, instead of becoming bitter, he turned to a different path of trying to make life better for those who face more challenges than he did.

From a Canadian point of view, this man was larger than life: larger than his wealth and power and the world is poorer without him.

Food for thought . . .