In Memory of Alan Caruba: A Candle That Goes On Flickering In The Dark

Judi McLeod / Canada Free Press

Some people leave behind legacies that go on forever after their life on Earth.  These are the ones far too lively for an ordinary obituary.

Patriot, writer and veteran of the United States Army,  Alan Caruba is one of those rare souls who soldier on in the human heart long after they’re gone.

He signed all his emails ‘Uncle Alan’ and was with Canada Free Press (CFP) longer than any other writer.  His friend Texas Fred of the TexasFred Blog  sent word today that Alan Caruba passed away on June 15, in his 77th year.

Imaginary black borders framed my thinking and seemed to match the rainy, windswept day on display outside my windows.

Most every day over the last 12-plus years, a column from ‘Uncle Alan’ was always there in my emails, but not today.  Thinking that they wouldn’t be there ever again had me laid low in a most painful grief.  Then somehow just remembering that Alan has joined his late friend, the great patriot and writer Henry Lamb, who died in 2012 came back to me as a comfort.

It got me to thinking how Alan and Henry would be sending down bolts of well-aimed criticism on the Pope’s environmental encyclical from their new abode.

It was Alan and Henry who taught CFP all it knows about the United Nations liberty-destroying Agenda 21.  Both writers, who researched its every detail and intent, were godfathers on the subject of the dangers of Agenda 21 on human society, never letting up on their written warnings.

Not sure whether he ever fully realized it, but it was Alan Caruba who gave Toronto Free Press (TFP), the investigative print journal predecessor to CFP,  its international wings.  Caruba, who later brought in Henry Lamb, taught us that there were bigger rogues working against society at the U.N. than the school board trustees and city hall councillors that still plague City of Toronto politics to the current day.

Caruba opened both our eyes and files to the devious empire building of Al Gore, Maurice Strong, Mikhail Gorbachev, et al, and life at our newspaper was never to be the same.

Caruba’s was the first American byline to appear regularly on our print publication, where he was popular with readers from the beginning. 

No one poked bigger holes in the U.N.-sanctioned scam known as man-made global warming/climate change than the CO2 savvy ‘Uncle Alan’.

When Caruba ventured our way, he was already a successful Public Relations executive.

Since 1990, he had been running the National Anxiety Center, self-identified as “a clearinghouse for information about ‘scare campaigns’ designed to influence public policy and opinion” on subjects including global warming, ozone depletion and DDT”.

No Hollywood star zooming in to global warming conferences by jet got a pass from his well-read critiques, as he sent more than a few chuckles up through the ozone layer with his writings in ‘The Boring Institute’, a lively blog that served up a steady menu of spoof, satirizing the mainstream media with annual lists of the year’s most “boring” celebrities.

The years 1994 until 2004, found Caruba as Director of Communications for the American Policy Center. He will be sorely missed at the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, in Bellevue, Washington, where he was an adjunct scholar.

It was so typical of Alan Caruba that he was an inspiration to other writers and bloggers, correcting their copy and goading them on with encouraging words, even though he was filing daily columns to CFP.  We discovered this not from ‘Uncle Alan’, but from the writers he went so far out of his way to help.

A hero to so many patriots, the biggest hero of Alan’s life was his mother, Rebecca Caruba of whom he was so proud.

Rebecca was a gourmet chef who wrote her own cookbooks and a connoisseur of fine wines par excellence.  The things he learned from his elegant mother would last him a lifetime.

During the October 2012 Super-storm Sandy, Caruba lived for over two weeks in a dark lighted only by the candle of his highly contagious humour.  We checked in with him through his cell phone every morning that turned out to be calls during which he tried to cheer us up, always telling us “Don’t worry”.  This, too, will pass.”

Even with the bad news coming out of Washington, D.C., Alan Caruba was unfailing in his belief that America would survive the domestic enemies working to take her down, and that Al Gore-Maurice Strong-style global warming/ climate change would someday be called out for the money-making scam it truly is.

Little did he know that his beliefs would inspire and encourage me on the same day I learned of his death.

Dear ‘Uncle Alan’, you will forever be the flickering candle of hope in so many lives.