I was greatly saddened to learn of my former mentor and friend's death. I first got to know Erle through our correspondence in the late 1980s as we had started exchanging letters after my first article was published in T’ai Chi magazine. After three years of being pen-pals, he came to Ottawa in the Spring of 1990. At the time he was still living in Australia and was doing a three week workshop tour in four cities in England as well as in two American cities, with Ottawa as the last stop.

He did 15 hours on push-hands, dalu and the fundamentals of bagua and dimmak for myself and a few other experienced local practitioners. His taiji martial skills were as good as I'd suspected they would be. However, somewhat more surprisingly, his forms were just as impressive. For a middle-aged man, his strikes were explosive, his slow Yang-style slow form very “internal”, his tactics effective and his push-hands energetic and smooth. His sense of control was excellent as was his balance and timing. He was also very good at explaining and demonstrating what he was trying to get across -- something that is still often lacking in taiji or kung fu classes where language difficulties make understanding difficult, if not impossible, for many of the students.

He was quite reserved and quiet at first but seemed to like my two sons who were about the age of his boys as he was staying with us while in town. He mentioned a number of times that he was feeling very homesick for his two sons and his wife who was pregnant with their daughter at the time. This proved to be the first of a number of visits to Ottawa in the 90s and I also studied his many videos in between sessions with him in person. From what I have heard over the years, I wasn’t the only one who profited from his generosity with answering questions by phone and email, not to mention the free videos and t-shirts that he mailed us.

Aside from the many times that he made me feel humble about my own skills in taiji and bagua over the years; I remember most the image of him during that first visit to Ottawa sitting at our dining room table playing lego pirates with my two young sons as his imitations of movie pirate lingo made them fill the house with shrieks of laughter.

He was a man who loved children, animals and the environment and was not afraid to show that side of his nature. Aside from his martial skills, Erle wrote and co-wrote a number of published books and dozens of articles on the martial arts. He was also an accomplished musician, had been an actor and stuntman in the theatre as well as a few movies in the early 70s. He had also been a professional wrestler before taking up taijiquan.

Like most talented tai chi personalities that I have met over the decades, Erle was a trifle “eccentric” and opinionated and that didn’t change over the years that I was a member of his World Taiji Boxing Association. Not surprisingly, he didn’t lack for detractors. Many in North America made fun of him and his approach but, not surprisingly, not to his face when they had the opportunity at workshops in Ottawa and in the US.

Erle was not a forgettable man in any sense of the word. Even though he and I ended our 20 year friendship and teacher/student relationship badly in 2007 over a variety of issues, I never doubted his ability as a martial artist or as a teacher. He was a man of many talents and a generous and gifted teacher.

His death was a sad loss for his family and for those who knew him in any of his capacities as friend, musician and martial artist. May he rest in peace.