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On the afternoon of the last day of his heartbreakingly short life, Archie MacIsaac-Vacon — the latest of a long line of Archibald MacIsaacs from Inverness County — bounded out onto the back deck of his house in Saint-Lazare, Que.

It was about 3:30 p.m, this past June 28. What his mother, Charlene Vachon, who was born in Yarmouth, most remembers is how bursting with life the 19-year-old was, how wonderful his day had been, how beautiful her boy looked.

You can see what she means in the picture accompanying this column, the last she has of him, which she snapped right about then.

His hair is tousled, his arms midway between teenager and adult.

There may even be some dust on his face and clothes, as there would be after a shift at the Montreal chemical factory where he was working before heading to Concordia University come fall.

There, for all to see, is the expansive smile and the eyes that seemed to take everything in.

On the table sits the collected works of Vladmir Lenin — “Mom this is the best author I have ever read,” he told Charlene that afternoon, who added “But he was constantly finding a new best author” — which he had been reading that day at work.

Such reading material seemed fitting for someone who had chosen to take a factory job in Montreal, rather than head for Inverness as he had during the past four summers to caddy for the well-off folks at Cabot Links golf course.

Archie got cleaned up. He and his mom and younger brother Angus had a little dinner. Then, as a young boy does in his 19th summer, he went out to meet some friends.

“He said ‘I love you mom’ and then went out the door,” Charlene told me Tuesday. “And that was that.”

At six the next morning a pair of Quebec police officers were at the door. After confirming her identity, they told her that at around 2 a.m. that morning, her first-born son had collapsed in the bathroom of a downtown Montreal bar.

Someone tried CPR. First responders arrived. But she remembers the French word the officers used, which translates as “inanimate.”

The police lab later tested a plastic pouch found on Archie; it showed traces of fentanyl.

And there is the saddest of ironies in this sad, sad story.

His mom, who currently manages a regional paramedic program for eastern Ontario, knew all about the dangers of fentanyl from a stint working in Alberta where use of the opiate has reached epidemic proportions.

His dad, Rob MacIsaac, a freelance editor, always told his son that if he wanted a little risk and excitement in his life to “make it worthwhile,” by jumping out of a plane rather than plowing a car, while drunk, into a building, or ingesting a drug that can kill you.

“Education was not the issue,” MacIsaac said. “He knew more about fentanyl than anyone you will talk to about it this year.”

But anybody, particularly a 19-year-old who has just put in a full day of work and has a few beers under their belt, can have a lapse in judgment. If you’re dancing your ass off with some friends, as Archie had been that night, maybe the protective shields are down, even if you happen to know better.

That’s why his parents are so angry.

Why didn’t they know about fentanyl strips which, they’ve since learned, can easily tell a person whether the drugs they’ve just bought contains the opiate?

Why aren’t there more public health safeguards against street-drugs like this one?

Why isn’t Naloxone, the antidote to fentanyl, available for free from pharmacies across the country, as it is in some parts of Canada?

These are questions to which there are no satisfactory answers, and even if there were they wouldn’t make the pain of their son’s passing go away.

You could hear it over and over again during the celebration of life in Saint-Lazare where, one-by-one, people took the microphone and spoke of what Archie had meant to them, and how, knowing him for even that short time, had enriched their lives.

“We were so proud of this kid,” his parents told me, in many different ways, when we spoke Tuesday.

And so, after the Quebec ceremony, even though a cemetery stands within blocks of their home, they headed back to Cape Breton, because this was the first summer that he hadn’t made it back to the island of his people and because they didn’t want him to be laid to rest alone among strangers.

Ten of his friends from Saint-Lazare made the trip down for the funeral, which took place at St. Margarets Parish in Broad Cove on July 19.

The parents couldn’t bear to see the urn with their son’s remains buried in the parish cemetery. So it was left to an uncle to lay his remains to rest, while Archie’s friends from Saint-Lazare each took a turn with the shovel.

He lies now near his great-grandfather. Archie’s grave furthermore is not far from the site of Broad Cove’s fabled Scottish Concert. He liked to attend that every summer. Now, his father says, “he will hear the music every year.”