Go back and take a look at us, twenty years ago. He is on stage with his band -- sweating, snarling, screaming. I hang in the back of the crowd; hardcore's not really my thing, but these guys are important, and this is our music. He doesn't remember meeting me that night at Mount Saint Vincent, but off-stage, he seemed quiet and serious. I'm sure I was either too caustic, or too shy, or too dark.

We didn't become friends until ten years on. He had left Halifax well before me, taking his band with him and starting another in Montreal. When we ended up chatting in a UNB cafeteria in the summer of 1994, it was about the information highway and where we were headed. Our Web design business went no where until it took us everywhere: Africa, Japan, Rome, Paris, Singapore, the UN.

This afternoon, peeking through the dancing sheet lightning of migraine, I raised a glass to Iainand his new wife. I reminded them that the groom had escaped a good creeling, contrary to all supposed Nova Scotia tradition, and that the first time we'd met, Iain had spit on me, by accident. And I thought, Thank god we all ended up here.