Mr. Speaker, Lincoln Alexander was an extraordinary man. I have already mentioned his admiration for youth and the time that he spent dialoguing with them and encouraging them to aspire to a greater vision than they had when they first met him.
He was not only a very classy man, but a very casual man as well. When he dressed up in his honorary chief of police uniform, I am certain that chiefs of police across the country were jealous because he looked handsome and pristine in that uniform.
If we were doing an event in Hamilton, I remember him coming down on his red scooter and a block away he would be yelling, “Sweet, what's going on?” That was okay. It was never meant as an insult. It was because we had the kind of relationship that he could address me that way. In fact, if he called me “David Sweet” or “Mr. Sweet”, I thought something was wrong.
Linc seemed to be one of those mystical, magical, extraordinary characters that could fit into any situation, whether at a black tie fundraising event, an official duty that he was doing as the honorary chief of police, or calling out “Hey, Sweet” to a member of Parliament to find out what was going on as far as what the government was investing in.