Remembering Guang Tong Tan (1995-2020)

People die all the time. Celebrities, war casualties, the elderly, the world is filled with people passing away and into the next life. We're almost used to it. In fact, with this pandemic, it really feels like the numbers don't mean anything anymore.

But when it hits close to home, it really hits.

In mid march, when quarantine had first started to be implemented in Canada, I heard the news that a childhood friend, Guang Tong, went missing. People were sharing the alert all over Facebook, and it really felt like 2020 was coming at us. In April, our worst fears came true, as his body was found in the St. Lawrence River. What a tragic loss for the chess community and for his friends and family.

I first knew him in 2006. At the time, I just played in my first scholastic tournament and was preparing for my first tournament away from home (in Ottawa), where we roomed together. It was honestly a stroke of luck that I placed higher than him by half a point. He was a talented player and though a lot of our casual games were all pretty close, I looked up to him because he had been playing consistently well for years. Keep in mind this was the good old days when 10 year olds were only 1400s at most. 

From grade 5 to 9, we played in tournaments together, rarely clashing. However, the chess community was tight, and we were good friends. We sort of drifted away when he stopped playing but I still saw him around, on our way to school (our high schools were neighbours) or at the grocery store where he later worked. I'll always remember him as being funny and fun to be with.

Our rated games

According to my database, I played him twice, once in 2007 and once in 2009, both times at the Quebec Chess Challenge. The first game was the final round and with a draw, he secured a Third Place showing in our section. The second one came in an early round 2 and ended in my favour, bolstering me en route to winning the big trophy and representing Quebec at the Canadian Chess Challenge.