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The Go Green bottle depot's Web page features a small photo of a fellow with a shopping cart. That's one of the only known photos of Rockin' Rob, a longtime Vancouver binner. Rob passed away over the weekend. He was only about 48-years-old, but he was a very heavy drinker. If there was such a thing as a heaven where Rob went, it's a good bet his liver beat him there.

He will be missed by many people; his family in Dawson Creek, the crew of binners he hung with in Vancouver, and pretty much everyone else who ever met him; that includes the residents of Fairview and Kitsilano, who will now wonder why they never see him anymore.

Rob leaves family in Dawson Creek, in northeastern British Columbia. In the last two years he had reconnected with them, even going to visit them a few times. They loved him, and encouraged him to move back home.

But he had people here in Vancouver also. For years he was part of a tight-knit crew of homeless binners who ranged through the Fairview and Kitsilano neighbouhoods in their daily quest for returnable bottles. In their off hours they all gravitated towards the industrial area around the Go Green bottle depot, where the covered parkades and loading bays served as the arenas for their drinking, fighting, and general carrying-on. Rob's little group made quite a soap opera of being homeless; falling in and out of like with each other on a daily basis, but they always came together and looked after each other. So they were Rob's family also.

Rob was someone I saw everyday. I liked him. We bantered. He previously slept in the parkade I now sleep in. For a few months we both slept there. He was fun to talk to, but a less-than-ideal parkade mate if you just wanted to sleep -- I once dozed off while he was talking to me, and woke up 20 minutes later to find he was still talking to me. Rob moved into newly-constructed social housing last spring.

He was a good person, with little or no pretensions. A long-time homeless guy who'd given up the hard drugs, leaving him with the kind of chronic alcoholism that meant he had to drink to be able to walk before he could drink to get drunk. Like everything else, he took it in his stride.

I only knew Rob for about three years, and I was never really close to him -- if you don't drink it's hard to hang with an alcoholic -- but I'm really hurt by the loss. In fact I can't actually believe he's gone (ah, now I've done it. I'm crying). I won't see him amble around a corner pushing a shopping cart decorated with trinkets and stuffed animals; see his sleepy grin, or hear him say anything with that country-twang voice of his, phrased so it sounds like a question. Really truly? That's too harsh My heart goes out to his close friends and family.

Binners hold a "Last Toast" for Rob ►