Jack Pecover died today, and I feel a deep sense of loss. Although we only met in person perhaps ten times over the years, we carried on a long epistolary conversation.   A letter from Jack was a time to sit down, get my wits about me, smile, laugh and hear his voice in my mind spinning his tales.

Jack and I shared an obsession, although his began long before my own. Both of us dealt with our obsession with the Cook family murders in Stettler in 1959 by putting pen to page and writing a book.  Jack’s Book, The Work of Justice, The Trials of Robert Raymond Cook was published in 1996 by Wolf Willow Press.  My book, The Boy,was published by Oolichan Books in 2011.

To share just a smattering of biography and the story of my making the acquaintance of this remarkable man, some excerpts from The Boy:

“The photo on the cover of The Work of Justice, The Trials of Robert Raymond Cook is of a young man in suit jacket and tie, hair combed straight back, looking as though he could have been on his way to a school dance, or a first job interview. This was Robert Raymond Cook, dressed for his trial in the murders of his father, stepmother, and the five young children of Ray and Daisy Cook.”

The book by Jack Pecover is four hundred and forty-nine pages, with two epigraphs:

“Who shall put his finger on the work of justice and say, ‘It is there.’ Justice is

like the kingdom of God; it is not without us as a fact; it is within us as a great yearning.”                         —  George Elliott

“The whole case agianst me consists of suspision and if theres any justice in this world something will be done. However I am beginning to have serious doubts as to weither or not there is any such thing as justice.”   

— “Letter from the death cell”  Robert Raymond Cook

“There is a foreword by Sheila Watson, author of The Double Hook, a novel which, I remembered with a jolt, opens with a man killing his mother. Even in the ten minutes I spent at a table in the library, skim reading, I found myself reaching for my pencil and the pad of post-it notes I carried in my bag. I put the pencil away. I would find my own copy for marking and defacing. Mr. Pecover, I decided, had a lot to tell me. The back cover said only: Jack Pecover is a retired lawyer and an alumni member of the Canadian Rodeo Cowboys Association. What I knew from the heft of this book was that Jack Pecover had spent a long time and a huge amount of energy examining the trials of Robert Raymond Cook.”

So I set out to find the man.

I arranged to meet Jack Pecover at a bookstore on the far south end of the city …

“He was easy to spot, a tall slim man in a trench coat, his face familiar from the photos. We sat at a small table crowded into the coffee shop corner of the store, and I found myself babbling nervously about my interest in the Cook case. I did not need to explain my fascination to the man who had written a 449 page book on the trials of Robert Raymond Cook.

Jack Pecover was still in law school when Robert Raymond Cook was executed. He become engrossed in the case, and one day, about a year after Cook’s death, he was walking in downtown Edmonton and found himself outside the office of Giffard Main. On a whim, he went up the stairs, asked to speak with the famous lawyer and to his surprise was escorted into Main’s office. He wanted to write a book about the Cook case, he told Main, and to his even greater surprise, the man agreed—on the condition that he, Giffard Main, would write the first and last chapters of the book. Jack Pecover said that at that point, he would have agreed to any condition to be given Main’s blessing. Main helped carry the files related to the case down to the car, and Pecover drove away with the pieces of a story that would take almost twenty years to emerge as a book, and even then would remain an unfinished puzzle.”

From my acknowledgements at the back of The Boy:

“To Jack Pecover, whose book, The Work of Justice, The Trials of Robert Raymond Cook, became my well-thumbed reference, I am indebted for a wealth of information, the acuity of his analysis, and his understanding of my obsession with finding the family buried in this infamous case. I am grateful to Jack as well for reminding me of the pleasures of old-fashioned correspondence, of opening an envelope and holding a real letter in hand.”

What a gift it was to know this man who so generously shared his intellect, insight, deep sense of irony and sharp wit.  I know that I will continue to watch my mailbox for an envelope with that familiar script. But I will have to be content to re-read Jack’s past letters.

I know there are many who played significant roles in Jack’s life and that they will blessed with memories and stories. So very many stories.