Paradise and Lunch - Obituary for Dave McConnell

Several months ago – maybe even close to a year ago? – I came across a facebook post announcing the death of Dave McConnell, who is someone I used to know very well during a big and formative part of my life. I queried the person who’d made this post – a friendly acquaintance from many years ago but not someone I was ever super close with. He was short on details but had heard through someone connected to the building Dave had lived in that Dave had had a heart attack. Over the next couple of weeks I made repeated Google searches with the terms “Dave McConnell,” “Halifax,” “obituary.” Nothing. I monitored the facebook pages of a couple of people I’d known had been close to him. Also, nothing. I thought about reaching out to them but didn’t want to mention it in case the information was incorrect and especially as I know one of these people was going through some serious personal struggles himself. I thought, though, that surely they would know, and would have made this evident in their facebook newsfeeds. So for a while I just kind of sat in a state of limbo, wondering if it might just be a piece of confused misinformation. But thinking, probably, that my old friend had died. Many months later I finally did see a discussion between the two people I knew about Dave’s death. I thought about jumping in and sharing my own sadness and reminiscences, but it felt awkward, delayed, and somehow out of time. Because I don’t know them anymore either, really.

Last year was intense. I felt overworked at my day job and I was planning a wedding. But Dave came into my consciousness all the time. I told Andy about him.

I met Dave McConnell when I was 21 and he hired me to work at United Bookstore. I’d just moved to Halifax from Toronto. He was, legitimately, the coolest person I had ever met.  As someone who was (and truthfully still is, but much less intensely) way too concerned with being liked, he was remarkably unconcerned. I found it so amazing and refreshing, especially because he was actually so talented and he had the best taste in everything. He didn’t care who knew it.

Dave was in his 30s when I met him. He was himself an Ontario transplant who had moved to Nova Scotia to attend Acadia University in Wolfville before finding himself in Halifax. He had a father who still lived in Ontario and a brother who worked for Seagull guitars. He used to date one of Alice Munro’s daughters. I am not sure which one. This was of course decades before the nation learned of Alice Munro’s awful treatment of one of her daughters. Alice Munro was my favourite author, then, and I was thrilled and relieved when he described her as the kind of person who listened to you like you were the most important person in the room. These are my memories of what Dave told me about his life before Halifax, and I wish I had asked and retained more.

He was not a happy person. I’m not sure what kind of life he’d dreamed of having but it was not managing a bookstore/convenience store that sold pornography, romance novels, and cigarettes. In addition to purchasing and then selling the items most of his clientele came into the store for, he was always eager to purchase good literature and VHS collections. His favourite author was Cormac McCarthy.

Dave had a one-year-old son, Duncan, when I met him. He joked about Duncan being the result of a first date that came with more repercussions than he’d expected. He also told me that he thought he’d been in love before but had never really understood love until he had his son – it was a whole other level. Whatever life he’d anticipated previously, it was clear he was living this one for his son, above all.

He lived above the bookstore in a large apartment with a massive kitchen, with his partner Bridget (Duncan’s mother) and Bridget’s two kids from a previous relationship, Zach and Sophie. All the kids were frequent visitors to the store and I was a frequent visitor to their apartment. I felt a kinship with Zach, an awkward pre-teen whose struggles at that age reminded me of similar ones I’d had. What an awful age. Bridget was a baker, who used the giant kitchen to bake treats for deliveries throughout the city. Dave was the first person I ever knew who had an Espresso machine. His kitchen smelled of baking and coffee and felt messy and lived in. As a 21-year old who spent most of my time with peers in bars and living rooms in shared flats I loved being in their presence, perhaps because I missed and was so far from my own family. In the living room, brightened by the sun streaming through the large windows overlooking Barrington street, I’d sip coffee and chat with Dave and sometimes even hear him play his slide guitar. My first Christmas away from home, I was invited to join them for a meal. At some point, Dave and Bridget separated, and the apartment’s enormity was properly revealed. When Duncan wasn’t there we sat close to the window smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee or occasionally whisky. Dave probably drank too much, but so did I, then, and it wouldn’t have set off alarm bells. He certainly never drank at work.

Dave introduced me to so much great music, played over the soundsystem in the bookstore – Bill Frisell, Ry Cooder, Joseph Spence, and Halifax’s own Al Tuck. At Christmas time, Bruce Cockburn’s Christmas played on repeat.  

I wasn’t the best employee, and I didn’t love working there. I didn’t know how to change a lightbulb and he never let me live that down. Dave also wasn’t the best boss. He could be surly and sarcastic and just a poor communicator. But I loved Dave. He felt like family. I remember knowing that I needed to quit so that we could save our friendship. And I did, when I went back to school. I recommended my good friend Rachel, and she began working there. My good friend Ken also worked there, prior to Rachel. He’d known Ken through me, while we’d been romantically involved, and in fact Dave was a support through the kind of heartbreak that can feel like it’s going to destroy you when you’re in your early twenties. He also hired my friend Keith, who ended up working there for years. I thought Keith was great, but I really didn’t know him as well as Rachel or Ken, and when Dave asked me if I’d recommend him I think I said as much, as my loyalty there was to Dave. Basically, “He’s a great, fun guy, but I have no idea what he’d be like as an employee.” Dave hired him and I am pretty sure I pissed Keith off with what he perceived as my lukewarm recommendation.

The last time I saw Dave was on a brief visit to Halifax a couple of years after I’d moved back to Toronto. Of course I wanted to drop in and say hello, and I was shocked to see that United Bookstore was closing that week. Dave was behind the counter and he spoke to me tersely without any of the enthusiasm I’d anticipated (goodness knows why, as enthusiasm was certainly not one of Dave’s typical character traits.) I left, actually crying, and ran into Keith on the street, who gave me a realistic and welcome perspective. “Of course he’s unhappy. The store’s closing, his life is upside down. Give it some time until this settles.” But I returned to Toronto and I never saw Dave again. I thought about him on later visits to Halifax but didn’t know how to get in touch. I should have tried harder. I would have enjoyed sharing another cup of coffee with him. I would have loved to introduce him to my husband Andy. I’m confident they’d like each other.

I’m saddened that there’s been so obituary, that there is no record of this life that impacted mine so significantly. So I’m sharing what I know, what I remember, from the time I knew him, decades ago. Maybe he’d hate this, but I hope a part of him would be happy to hear it. I want something to come up for those who Google “Dave McConnell,” “Halifax,” “obituary.” If you knew him, please share your stories in the comments.  

Dave McConnell was a masterful slide guitar player and loving father to Duncan. He was a very cool person. He lived a life free from pretention and appreciated all the finer things – music, literature, a great cup of coffee. He didn’t care what you thought. He was a good friend to the people he valued. He died in 2025 and is fondly remembered.