I first met Joe in 2005 while I was Canada Research Chair in democratic learning at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He had recently accepted a Canada Research Chair in critical studies at McGill University. At the time, I was organizing a regular colloquium series in the department of education at Concordia and invited Joe to come speak about his work to faculty and students with the expectation he would decline my offer due to the extraordinary demands on his own time. Of course I was wrong. Not only did he accept my invitation to speak but took the necessary time to answer all questions about his work from those who joined us on that particularly frosty winter afternoon.

Greetings,

There has been such an outpouring of love for Joe on this website and elsewhere, and the diverse, sporadic messages all mesh together, for me anyway. They resonate. They speak to the decency and humanity that Joe represented.

My partner Gina and I have been reading Joe's most recent book, Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy (published by Springer, 2008). We have been reading sections here and there, relating what we know and learn back and forth, and looping it back to Joe. I would like to share one small paragraph in the book that I think appropriately and effectively sums up (some of) Joe`s thinking. 

I will always have Joe in everything I do. Without his guidance, I would not have opportunities to speak as in this Op-Ed running today in my city paper: http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20090103/OPINION/901030317/1008

Continuing to grow the critical space—paul thomas