THE BUCK FINALLY STOPS — AND HE WILL BE MISSED

He was born on Feb. 14 and named Orville Valentine — a first name he didn’t like and a second he hardly used.

So he found a new one — and Buck didn’t stop.

Buck Sauvé was an irrepressible figure in our neighbourhood. There’s likely one in yours. So when he died Saturday, at age 86, we all perished a little too: Santa Claus had left the building.

Nothing tapped his personality better than Christmas. He lit his house like Vegas at midnight, put a sled on the roof and moving reindeer on the lawn, dressed up like Santa, handed out candy canes to passing children, piped seasonal music into the chill air, had an army in for drinks.

It was always something. He flooded the local rink and plowed the ice with a fleet of snowblowers. He would toodle around Champlain Park on an old bicycle, shout from his front porch, sing the songs of Mario Lanza, take home that chair you just put in the trash.

“He’s out there, absolutely, with everybody on the street. Anybody who goes by, he’s waving hello,” said Paul Badertscher, who lives across Sunny mede Avenue.

“He would always say, ‘Why not be nice? Doesn’t cost you anything.’ ”

The day Badertscher and his family moved in, during the ice storm of January 1998, they stood in their new house as night fell, with a toddler and a load of boxes. “The doorbell rings. Buck is there and says, ‘You guys have done enough for one day. Grab the little feller and come over.’ He drags us back, gives us a beer and some food,” said Badertscher.

“He was there for us from the very first day.”

Buck was unmissable. His wavy hair was always neatly combed and, for years, he had a pencilthin moustache, which made him look debonair, even when puttering outside in his pyjamas. He was a fidgety, jitterbug of a man, absolutely percolating, and tended to speak in short bursts — “How ya doing youn’ fella?” — and to many souls at once.

He had a fondness for things Mexican, especially at home, a small place when he bought in 1969 but nearly a full-blown hacienda when he finally downed tools.

One day this week, I sat in the backroom with two of his three sons, Stephen, 61, and Tom, 50. Gisele, his wife for 63 years, sat with us, in what appeared to be padded bar chairs. “Churchill Arms,” said Stephen. Buck had salvaged about 15 of them when the old motel shut down.

The backroom, or Rose Room as it became known, has rosecoloured walls, six or eight giant sombreros hanging from the ceiling, a disco ball, a full-blown bar at the back, a portable draught machine, chili pepper lights on the ceiling, and a bunch of empty pinatas. It was Buck — kooky and fun. He grew up poor, the oldest of five children in an Irish-French family in Depression-era Lowertown, in a house lit by oil lamps. His sons say he used to walk along the old train-tracks with a cart, picking up stray lumps of coal fallen from a railcar.

He had little formal education, but the gift of gab. He married Gisele, now 89, on Valentine’s Day in 1952 and they soon bought a house on working-class Armstrong Street.

While he worked for the city of Ottawa for about 40 years — in water purification — he always seemed to have a second job: gardening, painting, handiwork for the well-to-do on Island Park Drive.

His idea of a holiday? Time off so he could work as a ticket-taker at the Central Canada Exhibition. The kids, of course, loved the free rides.

It is remarkable how much west-end lore touched the man. Tom said he was a friend of legendary bouncer Gerry Barber and, after an injury with the Stirling Tavern broomball team, was driven to the hospital with a broken jaw by one Paddy Mitchell, noted for his footwork in the banking industry. He often volunteered at Laroche Park with Tom Brown, for whom the arena is named.

Buck loved to kid around to the end, his sons related. Nurse: “How are you today, Mr. Sauvé?” Buck: “Better now that you’re here.”

Buck: “You said you’d give me your number.” Nurse: “Why would I do that?” Buck: “So I can call when your husband’s not around.”

When he was sick in the hospital, Buck was adamant about his going away. He wanted an Irish wake, or “no tears, only beers” farewell, to be held at the house Friday.

The Rose Room will be glowing, the beer flowing — the Buck, sadly, passing.