from Randy Turner of the Winnipeg Free Press,
As a boy, Bruce Oake was a precocious kid. He was outgoing, friendly and impulsive.
"He spoke baby gibberish for a long while, and one day he just started talking," says his father, Scott Oake. "And he never shut up, ever after."
As a teenager, Bruce was a prankster. He and his brother, Darcy Oake, would play a game where they’d walk down the street holding hands to see who would let go first.
"If it wasn’t fun, he wasn’t interested in it," says Bruce’s friend Bret Olson. "He never wanted the day to end and couldn’t wait for it to get started again. That’s what stands out for me: just that tireless, ‘What are we doing next?’"
As a young man, Bruce had a booming voice. He craved to be around people. He was charismatic, persuasive and fearless.
"He had this way of connecting with people so easily," his brother says. "It was effortless. It was infectious."
At the age of 25, Bruce, by then a heroin addict, died alone on the floor of a washroom stall.
It’s not an easy story for his father, a longtime fixture on Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts, and his brother, a world-famous illusionist, to tell. But they tell it unflinchingly, if only because they learned the hardest way possible drug addiction doesn’t discriminate and that there are thousands of other family members out there experiencing the same agony.
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