It was a typical winter Friday as Vancouver said goodbye to one of its foremost citizens. Wet, cold miserable.

That did not stop hundreds of people from jamming Christ Church Cathedral to the rafters to say goodbye to Milton Wong. You’ve heard about the Fathers of Confederation? Well, Milton was a Father of Modern Vancouver.

He was also a friend who liked to turn up at the office without warning, expecting you to drop everything and go to lunch. Which you did, because it was like having lunch with Gandhi or Plato or Adam Smith or those other guys he liked to quote.

Not only did he quote them, he actively lived their ideas. How many guys do you know who sift hungrily through the great books looking for a practical blueprint for humanity? Milt did that, and that was only one small part of what he did.

He also built a fortune as a money manager, was a driving force in establishing the Dragon Boat Festival and the Laurier Institution, served as chancellor of Simon Fraser University and was a tireless fundraiser. He helped move the SFU School For Contemporary Arts to the Downtown Eastside, a part of town he loved and worked to nurture back to health.

He was also a friend who liked to turn up at the office without warning, etc.

Everyone was there Friday – from John Q. Public to an astonishing array of VIPs, from former premier Mike Harcourt to Adrian Dix, pretender to the throne. Even though it was held in the city’s foremost Establishment Temple, the faces represented every race, colour and creed on the human spectrum, as Milt embraced them all.

Every one of them counted Milt Wong as a friend. Every one of them had their own story about their impromptu lunch buddy, their fellow fitness buff, the incredible host and chef, the guy with the winning smile, a man who shared insights gleaned from 18th century philosophers the way other people share gossip: With a big grin, glittering eyes and breathless enthusiasm.

Milt Wong’s last day was also the last day of 2011. He was 72, but until cancer took over he had the mind and body of a 27-year-old. He left on the threshold of a new year, his job not finished, never finished. His was a vision that strove to unite us, encouraging us to work through our differences and become greater than the sum of our parts.

And he also liked to go for lunch.

I still half-expect him to turn up unannounced, bringing news of Adam Smith.