North Shore Rescue team member John Blown didn't plan on spending Sunday night crafting a message to tell the world about the death of his mentor, leader, and very good friend.
No, John Blown had just spent a day skiing on Grouse Mountain with his nephew and was getting ready for bed, a busy work week ahead.
Then his pager went off. As an 11-year veteran of the search and rescue team, Blown was used to the pager buzzing and taking him away from whatever he was doing. It's what volunteer search-and-rescue team members the world over do: someone gets lost or hurt in some dangerous corner of the landscape and they go find them and bring them back to safety.
This message was different though. Check your email, it said. Blown then opened the email from his NSR teammate Simon Jackson. What he read didn't just shock him, but very nearly put him literally into shock, shutting his body down.
Tim Jones was dead.
After a few minutes Blown started to regain his senses and realized that he would have to be the one to spread the news of the death of the man who built NSR into one of the greatest search and rescue outfits in the world, the man who had gone into those mountains hundreds and hundreds of times to find those in danger, the man who embodied more than anyone else the rugged passion of the mountains that give the North Shore its identity.
There were two NSR members who were typically responsible for getting messages out on social media. Blown was one, a natural choice given his day job as the managing director of the marketing company that he co-founded. The other was Curtis Jones, Tim's son. Curtis would be even less able to function than he was, Blown realized.
It was time. Rumours were already leaking out and Blown was now receiving queries from media outlets. But how do you announce the sudden and shocking death of someone who was not just a community hero but also a great friend?
A year ago Blown made a personal plea to Jones to come help him during the dangerous rescue of snowboarder Sebastian Boucher. They miraculously found Boucher at the bottom of a waterfall two days after he went missing, and Jones was the last one lifted to safety by an Armed Forces helicopter.
In 2007 Blown spent two nights in a claustrophobic snow cave with Tim Jones and an injured snowshoer as avalanches tumbled around them during the famous Theta Lake rescue.
"You go through that with someone and you definitely develop a special kind of relationship and special bond," says Blown.
Now that he was staring at an empty Facebook box that needed to be filled with a death notice, Blown didn't know what to do.
"Even writing a coherent sentence at that time was difficult," he says. In the end the message was blunt, much of it copied and pasted from the original email that was sent to him by Jackson.
"It is with great sadness and shock that I report that Tim Jones passed away tonight...."
Hitting the "Post" button was tough though, as if the news might somehow change as long as it wasn't spread to too many people. But it had to be done. Click.
Even though he was the one who wrote the words, there was a part of Blown that was hoping it would turn into one of those Internet hoaxes, that he'd show up at Jones' house the next morning and there would be Tim ready for another rescue, cussing Blown out all the while for getting the story wrong.
"I was almost hoping it was some huge, huge mistake," he says. "When I sent it out I was almost not believing the message myself."
Since that night the members of North Shore Rescue have stopped talking about how Tim Jones died and instead focused on how he lived. Not only did Jones go out on most of the calls NSR received, but he also was a very loud voice in advocating for rescue teams across the province and educating the public about the need to be prepared whenever they faced the dangers of the wild.
Jones had also recently received the OK from John Blown to start posting things on Facebook.
"We didn't give him access for a long time," says Blown. "We were afraid that he might swear online."
The stories NSR members tell about Tim Jones are incredible, and they're going to keep telling them to whoever will listen. They're also going to keep doing their jobs. They'll do all they can to stop people from getting themselves into trouble, and when trouble inevitably arrives they'll be the ones crawling out of bed, skipping out of work or racing away from their kid's soccer game to pull strangers to safety.
Tim Jones would insist upon it, says Blown. The man who built North Shore Rescue into a tower of strength also did everything he could to ensure it would stay standing once he was gone. That's a message we can all take comfort in.
