"I don’t believe it’s all for nothing.
It’s not just written in the sand."
- Robbie Robertson, from the song "Fallen Angel"

I believe that. I want to believe that.

On days like this, it is so hard to believe that.

Les Bartley passed away this morning. A bright and brilliant man -- inspiring, generous, great in any sense that the word still actually means something -- taken from us all by cancer at the dreadfully young age of 51.

Just one day before, almost 20,000 ecstatic, elated lacrosse fans packed the Air Canada Centre to watch the Toronto Rock win their fifth National Lacrosse League championship. Les was the coach for the first four -- and for three titles with the Buffalo Bandits before that.

Loud and brash on the surface, deeply thoughtful underneath, Les excelled in multiple arenas. Away from the lacrosse box, he held the delicate, tricky, high-pressure position of union negotiator at General Motors, in his native St. Catharines, Ontario.

In both positions, he played the dual role of motivator and master technician. Even if you only met him briefly, he’d give you something to think about. If he liked you, he’d demand that you think about it. Not in a pushy, arrogant way -- although he projected both those qualities with great enthusiasm when he felt the situation required it. He’d want you to realize important things about your own potential, and he’d subtly show you ways to get there you never would have dreamed of on your own.

He challenged you constantly – not because he thought you were wrong, but because he wanted you to know you’d missed something.

That Robbie Robertson song has been all over my head for a day now. Robertson grew up on the Six Nations native reservation near Hamilton, a place where lacrosse is practically religion. The song is a beautiful piece of art, written by a searching soul trying to come to terms with the sudden death of a close friend.

It continues:

"And the river was overflowing,
And the sky was burning red,
You’ve got to play the hand that’s dealt you,
That’s what the old man always said."

Not so old, as it turned out. Les had it all figured out a couple of years ago, when he was just 49. Retire early from GM, and concentrate full time on winning lacrosse championships with the Toronto Rock. There was no sign of age on this guy. He was vital, alive and looking forward to a long, triumphant run.

And that’s when he got sick. A large, malignant obstruction in his bowel.

He was forced to step aside at the dawn of the 2004 season. Rock captain Jim Veltman -- who played for Bartley on every single one of those championship teams -- called him to the floor before the opening game. Not by name, but using Walt Whitman’s famous words of tribute from Leaves of Grass, re-immortalized by Robin Williams in the movie Dead Poets Society:

"O Captain! My Captain!"

As Les departed to battle for his life, the Rock were passed on to Terry Sanderson, a brilliant coach whose gruff, straight-forward style could not have been more different. He rebuilt the team in is own image, and after falling a couple of games short a year ago, led them right back to the top of the box lacrosse mountain.

Sanderson deserves tremendous credit for what he has done. I plan to give him plenty in the years to come.

But today, my thoughts are elsewhere. I am grieving the greatest man I ever met, and actually got to know.

By the time I left the Air Canada Centre yesterday, I knew there wasn’t much time left. As I was climbing the lonely, barren concrete stairwell that leads from the team dressing rooms up to Bay Street, I was imagining what Les would say to me right at that moment.

Suddenly, it was as if he was right there with me.

I could see how it would be. He’s right at the top of the stairs, leaning on the wall in his crisp, black suit, blonde hair slicked back, grin on his face and a mischievous wink in his eye.

"Hi, Les," I say. "Help me make sense of this."

I’ll never know exactly what he would have said, but I’m sure it starts with "Well, ya know, Ben..." He makes a couple of points I don’t quite understand. I spend the rest of the conversation turning them over in my head, trying to grapple with the new concept he’s just tossed at me.

I see him start to look away. There are other people he wants to talk to.

"So, in other words," I say, thinking hard, but still guessing: "Be myself, and believe that what I’m doing is good and important."

"You got it," he says -- and is gone.

Les Bartley gave that gift of belief to untold hundreds of people. He always believed in the people around him, and went endlessly out of his way to make sure they believed, too.

There was never enough time for us to really talk. Somewhere back in the stretch drive of 2003, I shouted at him across a noisy post-game locker room. "Let’s get together! I want to talk lacrosse."

"I hate talking about lacrosse," he yelled back. "Let’s talk about something else!" I never got to have that conversation.

An ancient Iroquois legend says the Creator gave lacrosse to the people, for the Creator’s entertainment. At Six Nations, generations of players learn that legend as they learn the game, and play as if they have a higher, deeper purpose.

I don’t understand much about this life, and how it is that terrible evils like cancer can snuff out the existence of rare and irreplaceable souls like Les.

But if the Iroquois legend is true, I’d love to know what the Creator and Les Bartley are talking about tonight.

Thank you, Les. Onward!

Ben Knight is lacrosse and soccer columnist for Sportsnet.ca, where this article first appeared.