A 22-year-old Victoria man who died in a Montreal fire is being remembered as a talented musician who lived his dream of heading east to play jazz with his bandmates.
Henry Luke Rachwalski — who went by Luke — and an unidentified 18-year-old female were killed in an early morning blaze Friday on St.-Jacques Street.
Rachwalski’s family heard about the fire but didn’t immediately know what had happened.
“We didn’t know who died,” said his mother, Terry Rachwalski, on Saturday. “There were a number of injuries. I knew he had died when I called all the hospitals and he wasn’t there.”
The fire is believed to have started in the second storey of the three-storey 1920s-era residential building. Rachwalski and his girlfriend were in a back bedroom.
“They went different ways,” said his mother, a certified management consultant. “They separated. He went one way, she went the other, and he was asphyxiated — smoke inhalation. She was badly burned but she got out.”
Rachwalski was remembered Saturday as empathetic and loving, always grinning and mugging for the camera. He loved skimboarding in Arbutus Cove, hiking Mount Doug and partying on the beach. He got his first guitar at age nine and was hooked.
“He’d make you laugh and he’d make you cry; the guy had a lot of life in him,” said Victoria musician George Anstey.
Rachwalski was the lead vocalist of the jazz-rock band Canvas, formed in Victoria with Jimmi James Fraser, Peter (Keys) Ransford and Devon Venoit.
Determined to get to Montreal, the band outfitted a short school bus with carpet and makeshift bunkbeds. They played a sold-out show at Lucky Bar in August, then headed east.
“The dude just had his mind made up,” Anstey said. “He just said: ‘I am a musician. This is why I’m here, and this is what I’m going to do.’
“It didn’t matter they were completely broke; that their bus was breaking down; that they didn’t have a place to sleep once they got to Montreal; that they didn’t have shows booked when they left. They found a place to play and eventually they found a place in Montreal.”
There, they got day jobs and played night gigs. A recent jam with Canadian indie rocker Serena Ryder brought the band recognition.
“Luke wanted to be on tour for the rest of his life, and in a way he got really close to that,” Anstey said.
Family friend Trish Fougner said the family is devastated by the loss.
“At least he lived his dream and did what he wanted to do,” she said. “They allowed him to have that opportunity, and you can’t take that away from him — he got to play.
“They will take solace in knowing he followed his dream.”
If the 27-hour labour that delivered Rachwalski was tough, trying to corral the free-spirited teenager was tougher, his mother said.
Socializing took priority over studying and behavioural problems saw him spend years staying with friends and “couch-surfing.”
But if those teenage years were rough, “the last three years were wonderful,” Terry Rachwalski said.
The close-knit Gordon Head family — Rachwalski’s mother; father Maurice Rachwalski, a senior manager with the Capital Regional District; and brother Jack, 18, a Saanich Jr. B hockey player — leaves today for Montreal, where they plan to hold a service. There will be another service and benefit concert in Victoria in the coming weeks.
“We want to do something in his name to help struggling artists,” Terry Rachwalski said. “We encourage other people to go to live shows and see the kids up there. … That’s where art comes from.”
The family has also set up a Henry Luke Rachwalski memorial page on Facebook.
Rachwalski penned a poem in February 2011 entitled “Just a Thought.” The last two stanzas read:
Make a point of getting out
Never live your life in doubt
No-one is better without
You in their life.
So try to take these words to heart
Don't be sad when I depart
We all get another start
I'll see you then, my friend.
