In the spring of 2002, I saw Karl at the school playground of Cliffwood Public School where my sons attended grade school and he was a principal . As usual he was greeting the children and their parents by their names as well as picking up the odd pieces of litters on the ground.

We chatted about my concept of doing an installation in a school environment to demonstrate to students about the enormous magnitude of number of people died of tobacco related illnesses in the world. Karl was enthusiastic and offered to present the idea to the school committee for approval to install the installation in the gym. However, because of certain concerns by some committee members, eventually, he arranged for us to install the art project at Highland Junior High down the street from Cliffwood. 

When ARTi-Smoking completed its project at Highland J. H, we invited Karl to be one of our advisors. I only found out after Karl passed away that he had 3 cancer illnesses, and he remained a marathon runner until as recently as this spring when I saw him coming out from the ravine by Don River where I frequently cycle. Since we were going opposite directions and I only noticed his back as I passed-by, we didn't greet each other.

Karl was Lukas and Dudley's most favorite principal. Dudley also thinks he was cool since he collected all the Matrix DVDs.

David Cheung June 2006