Sitting down to speak with Jonathan Traynor , a Glasgow-based artist and writer, about his newly-released book, POCA! , we were expecting a few things. Y'know the sort of stuff: how the Kickstarter went; where the idea for the book came from; hopes for the future; picks for the Top of the Pops Xmas #1; and so on. However, in spending an hour with this huge fan of all things Game Boy Camera , we find ourselves enthralled and engaged in ways we just didn't see coming. Why? Well, because at the time we'd been drinking eggnog all morning. But also, because Jonathan's passion for one of the Game Boy's coolest peripherals is infectious. You can't not find out something you didn't know about this technological marvel whilst spending an hour in this man's company. But what exactly is POCA? Well, before we got our hands on a copy of the book, we assumed it was a dinky little pocket comic about a talking Game Boy Camera (or Pocket Camera as it's known in Japan) who goes on a big day out snapping photos in Glasgow. Which would have been enough to warrant a serious investigation, let's face it. The intriguing thing here, though, is that it turns out to be more. Rather than make something that appeals only to gamers, or fans of the Game Boy specifically, this is a celebration of the love and care that went into the creation of the Pocket Camera that's welcoming to any reader. It's a heartfelt tip of the hat to composer Hirokazu "Hip" (or indeed "Chip") Tanaka that melds its gaming origins with a cool story, plus some genuinely useful tourist pointers about Glasgow. What a mix! It may also be just the beginning of a worldwide adventure for Poca himself. We hopped over to Glasgow's majestic Kelvingrove Museum — where some of the book takes place — to speak with Jonathan. Nintendo Life: Hello there, Jonathan. Let's start off by talking about where the initial idea for POCA! came from. It immediately feels like it's something quite personal to you, so what was the initial spark? Jonathan Traynor: Around this time last year, I got an Analogue Pocket, just as a curiosity and it's the best thing I've ever bought. I instantly knew it was such a good purchase, because I obviously owned a Game Boy when I was young. And the fact that you can plug Game Boy games into this and play them straight away has been such a marvel. So, I got this, and I've recently also been taking up photography as a hobby. A couple of years back, I got my first proper, dedicated camera. Prior to that, I was just taking photographs from my phone, like anyone, but I wanted to make a more deliberate effort to take photographs of things and carry a camera around to new places that I went to. When I picked up this Analogue Pocket, one of the first things I did was find my old Game Boy Camera, and I popped it into the Analogue and it still had photographs from when I was, like, nine years old on it. Immediately I knew I had to do something with that. It has a personal aspect, absolutely, but it also takes such unique images. Then from the realisation you wanted to do something, the book was the first thought? Or were there other ideas first? Initially, what I wanted to do was maybe make a photography zine or something like that. But I was also looking into the history of the development of the Game Boy Camera, and it's such a unique device when it comes to its development as well. It almost never got made, and the developers had to really try hard to pitch [and] make it. But when it came out, it also held the record as the world's smallest digital camera. I also realised that there were quite a lot of differences between the Game Boy Camera as they came out in the West, and the Pocket Camera as it was known in Japan. And one of the big differences was the branding and packaging. It's almost like a little buddy character kind of thing there, like a Tamagotchi . I just had this idea of, 'Oh, it's like this own little standalone guy with this eyeball.' And it becomes this whole other thing when you put it into a Game Boy. It was around that time I started brainstorming this idea, I could turn this into a small adventure book about a little Game Boy Camera-style character, who travels around taking photographs of places. Glasgow, as a starting point. And then you came up with the name Poca, which is obvious in a way, but is there more to it? I called him Poca, after Pocket Camera, and also to avoid any legal troubles. [laughs] It works pretty well as a name, doesn't it? And, you know, Pokémon was a huge thing for me, and so Pokémon and Tamagotchis and Digimon and things like that, this idea of having a little companion who grew alongside you and levelled up and gained new skills and abilities. And I thought I could bring that into Poca as a character. So that's part of the concept of this book - Poca is this little camera from the '90s. He's a little outdated and he was developed and designed to be like just like for the kids in the '90s, maybe the Game Boy Camera was the first camera they ever had. Right? Yeah, the levelling up of the character was one of our favourite parts of the book - from a gamer perspective, how he grows and gains new skills along the way. The question marks over the skills of Poca as he first boots up and comes back to life, had us excited to see how he would develop. Yeah, that was one of the aspects of it that I really wanted to drill into, how he could learn all these skills that maybe modern cameras use, things like geolocation or time and dates, or maybe eventually colour photography or something like that. As Poca levelled up and grew alongside you, he'd get better and develop. Let's talk about the Kickstarter a little bit. When did you decide to jump into Kickstarter? Was that terrifying and how did it go? It was extremely terrifying! It was the most work...I didn't realise how much work a Kickstarter is. Last year I made my very first little comic book. It was a small passion project. I made this little 60-page comic and I paid for the printing costs of that upfront, which was quite a lot, because it's not cheap to print books, as it turns out! And it was like a little black-and-white book so the costs were a bit more reasonable. But I knew going into this that the costs were going to be higher because it's a full-colour book featuring a lot of photographs and things. It has to be of a certain quality for photographs to work. It's a risk, but if you have a good idea, it can work, right? And because the book is such a good mix of things, in that it brings together the travel aspect, the tourism, the Game Boy, there's something there for people who aren't necessarily into games. You could give this to a kid as a way to enjoy sightseeing around the city, for example? Yeah, that was definitely one of the pitches for the book. That was what was important to me - I'm a massive Nintendo fan, and I'm a huge games enthusiast, but I didn't want to just make the book for gaming people. And especially the Game Boy, it's already a niche kind of subject and the fact that it's a '90s thing, who is my audience? Am I targeting 30-year-olds like myself? Or am I targeting kids? How do I take this subject and make it a bit more all-around appealing to people? I thought the fact that it's centred and based around Glasgow, the city I've spent most of my life in, was a big draw as well because I loved developing this interest in taking photographs of the places I like. But also, I want to try and take these things and do something with them. So this was taking a lot of things that I've been interested in over the years, and trying to put them together into one big kind of book. We want to touch on the end-of-chapter summaries that we've already touched on a bit, but to go back to them, it's a very nice idea, with the collected characters from the current chapter, Poca's thoughts, and so on, all presented on a final round-up page. Was this always part of the plan? It was actually something that came in the latter half of development of the book, these end-of-chapter reports. I call it the Pocadex, which is obviously inspired by Pokémon. There's a lot of influences in there. I was creating chapters, and I had all these ideas for the characters that appear in each one, and what I wanted Poca to say and go through. I was finding that I was at risk of making the chapters way too long. So I thought, influenced by Pikmin and how the character Olimar writes a little end-of-day report and talks about certain things - maybe it's something that happened that day, maybe he found this item or something, or he's just talking about Pikmin in general. And I was like, 'Oh that'd be quite a cool idea like at the end of a chapter. Maybe Poca could write a little end-of-day report along those lines. I've also got him signing off at the end and he's got a level, like "Poca, Level 1." You know when you were a kid and you would maybe draw a picture or something, you'd always sign it "Jonathan, age 5," I thought that'd be a cute wee thing to do. And with the chapter titles, there's something going on there, too. We recognise them. We had initially guessed Super Mario Galaxy , but we were wrong! It's Pikmin 4 , right? How could we not know that after guiding the game? [laughs] Well, I'm a huge Pikmin fan. Pikmin is probably my all-time favourite Nintendo franchise. I don't know if you know this, but I'm almost single-handedly responsible for bringing Pikmin back into the mainstream. [laughs] For about two years solid, every week on a Wednesday at 1pm, I would post a tweet saying that Shigeru Miyamoto had confirmed Pikmin 4 was in development. And this was in that period after Pikmin 3 , where it just went silent for like about eight years. And I was, as a Pikmin fan, just like, where is it? So I just hammered it on Twitter until the day it was actually officially announced, and I was like, 'Okay, I'm done!' There are some shots of drawn characters here that got us thinking, had you planned that shot beforehand, had you got the photos in advance and then came up with a story to fit what you had? Or did figure the story out first? Yeah, 90% of the photographs were taken before the book was in development, before I'd planned out the story or the characters and stuff. A lot of the characters and story were made to fit around what I could do with the photographs. I had all these photographs around the River Clyde because I walk down there quite a lot, I'm nearby and it's a nice walk on a nice day. And this is where we got a surprise at first from the book, we learned something new (!) about the River Clyde after living here for 20 years. There's a story running through the book that involves it, right? I was trying to think of a little chapter-length story that I could put Poca through as he travels around, and I got this idea of, well, why is it called the River Clyde? I didn't really know. And I looked into it and what I discovered was that the River Clyde is named after a Celtic goddess called Clota. And as it turns out, there's not a lot known about this goddess. There are two references in historical text, or on a wall in some Roman place, referring to this goddess, and it's just carried on since then. And so I developed this idea of creating Clota as a character in the book, she could pop up and speak to Poca. I wanted this fantastical layer to the book, almost in a Spirited Away , Ghibli kind of way. One thing we've got to ask you about is the pictures of real people dotted through the book here and there. Are they friends, Kickstarter backers? There is a picture here at the beginning of Phantom Donuts, of two people. So I'm in Phantom Donuts all the time. And, then, at the end of the book, the very final chapter is set in a sushi shop called Sushi Riot. And I knew at this point what I wanted to do with the story and I knew that, not to spoil things, but Poca's story is eventually going to lead to Japan. And I thought it would be nice if the final chapter of the book had that kind of tie or that lead-in to Japan. Ok, let's get into that, so the plan is there for the next book to be in Japan? We weren't sure whether it was to be continued or not. Initially, at the beginning of the year, the idea started out as a little story about Glasgow. This summer I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to travel. Me and my partner went to Hawaii, and there was an opportunity there. At this time I was just really into taking photographs with a Game Boy Camera and stuff. I was like, 'You know what, I'm going to do it. I'm going to take my Game Boy Camera to Hawaii as well.' As we were planning this trip to Hawaii, I also tacked on a trip to Japan at the end. I had a sabbatical from work and it allowed me to do this. And before I went, I [thought], 'You know what, I could take a bunch of photographs in Hawaii, I could take a bunch of photographs in Japan, and I could make three books. I could make a Glasgow, Hawaii, and a Japan book.' And at this time, the books were still very ... I was still thinking they were just going to be short, 30-page books or something. So, when you were in Japan as well, you bought some more Pocket Cameras and you made a bit of a discovery. I knew that when I went over I was going to be looking for more. So I ended up coming back with four Game Boy cameras, including one boxed one. And this is maybe a little bit interesting, but the Game Boy had photographs on them already from other people who had owned them previously. And I felt really bad about deleting them. I didn't want to delete other people's memories and photographs. So, perhaps a little controversially, I did decide to use a few of these photographs in the book and incorporate them into the story in some way. I asked around and I put out feelers and I was like, 'Is this okay?' I don't know, is using other people's images without their permission okay? I don't even know how I would ever find these people, right? I don't know if this photograph was taken in the 1990s or 2015. I asked around and I put out feelers and I was like, 'Is this okay?'...You can go down to the market and buy photobooks of people's photographs down there. You can buy postcards people sent a hundred years ago, and I always find that quite interesting, and a little bit sad. So I thought, there's a certain level of anonymity when it comes to Game Boy Camera photographs, right? Because they're so low-resolution and black and white and stuff. You can go down to the market and buy photobooks of people's photographs down there. You can buy postcards people sent a hundred years ago, and I always find that quite interesting, and a little bit sad. I think that even if it transpired that they saw the book, they'd only be happy about it and I would love nothing more than to try and find them. You have another book here, a very cool-looking Japanese guide to the Pocket Camera, from all the way back in the day and it's full of stuff that the camera could do. This Pocket Camera guide is something I didn't really know existed until six months ago or something. Somebody on Twitter posted a picture of their very impressive Nintendo collection including all these like Game Boy cameras and stuff, and this book, and I was like, 'Oh my god, what's this book? I need to see it, I need to find it.' I ended up hunting down a copy. I was like blown away by the book. It's obviously all in Japanese. It's mostly just quite dense 'Here's what you can do with the Game Boy Camera' and all this fun stuff. You can make limited animations, you can do this, you can do that. But one of the things I did realise is that the development team for the Game Boy Camera was this very interesting group of people that came together and had a lot of passion for this project. In particular, the project was led by Hirokazu Tanaka, who's a music composer primarily, and he made a lot of Nintendo tunes that you would recognise instantly from the Game Boy era ( Tetris , Super Mario Land ) and the NES era ( Balloon Fight , Metroid ). He was the project lead on this and he ended up going on to work for Creatures Inc. [as president]. So here's this big guy and he retired from all that recently , and he's now a chiptune artist. He goes around performing sets in Japan with all these stage shows. He's just an incredibly, incredibly cool guy. You can listen to his music on Spotify, it goes under the pseudonym Chip Tanaka . I was looking into it and I can tell he's still very passionate about the Game Boy Camera and the work that was put into it. We feel as though we really need to make some sort of an effort for Mr Tanaka to see this book now. You were considering this guy as you worked on it? You can see towards the end of the book, or in certain bits, there's all these little tidbits that he's written about the Game Boy Camera and then at the very end there's all these comic strips, and this was after I was developing Poca's idea, and I was looking at this, and I was thinking, 'There's something here, there's a connective tissue.' What I found out, something maybe not a lot of people know, but the Game Boy Camera has this hidden staff credits screen. It's full of secrets and easter eggs in the software, but there are games that you can play, and one of them is a button-mashing runner, and if you beat [it] under a certain amount of time, you unlock secret staff credits. And the secret staff credits have music that Hirokazu Tanaka wrote, and it's like the most — I don't know — I was listening to it for the first time this summer, and I was almost tearing up. I just thought it was the most beautiful music I'd ever heard and it felt like it really...it was instantly like the theme tune to Poca for me. I was thinking, "This is everything I wanted from this project." And it's such an interesting thing. If this book reignites someone's interest in the Game Boy Camera or in Tanaka, I feel like that would make me very happy. I mean, if I could find a way to get a copy of this to him, it would definitely be like a dream come true. I feel like I made the book almost for him. Oh wow. Imagine if we could somehow make a Christmas miracle happen and get a copy of this in Mr Tanaka's hands. Right, you know that would be kind of perfect. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Thanks to Jonathan Traynor for his time, and to the staff at Kelvingrove Museum, for the lovely coffee. "Poca! Vol.1 Glasgow" is now available to buy over on Kickstarter and you can follow Jonathan ( @Jofamo ) and Chip Tanaka ( @tanac2e ) on Twitter.With their win over the New England Patriots , the Los Angeles Chargers clinched a spot playoff in the upcoming NFL postseason. While that is worth celebrating, they also lost starting free safety Elijah Molden , who suffered a broken fibula in the win. Molden will miss the remainder of the Chargers 2024 campaign. Elijah Molden Ruled Out For Chargers Playoff Run Molden emerged as a valuable asset to the Chargers’ defense under the guidance of head coach Jim Harbaugh and defensive coordinator Jesse Minter. Thrust into a starting role, Molden demonstrated versatility and playmaking ability. His addition via trade shortly before the season allowed Minter to move Derwin James to various positions on the field and became a critical member of the team as Alohi Gilman struggled to stay healthy. Molden combined for 71 tackles, including two for loss. In coverage he allowed just 18 receptions on 27 targets for 173 yards, amounting to a 44.8 NFL passer rating. He also picked off three passes and recovered two fumbles. Molden missed Week 16 with a knee injury and was questionable to play against the Patriots with the same ailment. New addition Eddie Jackson and veteran Tony Jefferson filled in for Molden once he left the game. The Chargers have found their secondary bare due to injuries. Gilman is now on the injured reserve along with Asante Samuel Jr., Marcus Maye, and Eli Apple. This has forced the team to rely heavily on rookie fifth-rounders, Tarheeb Still and Cam Hart. While the young duo has played admirably, their level of competition is about to take a big leap in the tougher direction as they embark on their playoff run. They will likely play the Buffalo Bills or the Baltimore Ravens in the Wild Card round. This article first appeared on LAFB Network and was syndicated with permission.
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BACK IN TIME
Greg Gumbel did not care for parades. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was something about the artifice of it all, the way people got together and cheered for all those silly things that were strolling by. Mostly, I think, it was an affectation, a touchstone of humor for Greg to come off as curmudgeonly when everyone knew that he was actually the sweetest man alive. Greg also didn’t like golf. He tried it a couple of times, hated it, gave it up and then spent the rest of his life mocking the game and those who enjoyed it. This was a constant source of amusement because Clark Kellogg and I love golf almost as much as we love college basketball. When we would wax poetic on the CBS set about our respective games and the courses we’ve played, Greg would sit back in his chair and roll his eyes. He would make us chuckle with the overly grave tones he used when reading a promo for CBS’ golf coverage. If a highlight came on showing a player about to strike a putt, Greg would crack, “Bet it goes in.” Greg had a strong aversion to eggs and a Constanza-like ability to act hilariously annoyed at small things. But he loved a lot of things, too, like stand-up comedy and slapstick movies and Howard Stern. Once in a while during a highlight I would drop in a “Baba Booey” reference to see if I could throw him off on live TV. Greg and I were both fluent in Trading Places . There was literally no situation where some line from the movie couldn’t be dropped in and send us both guffawing. He had a very high batting average when it came to forwarding jokes over email. He loved classic rock, especially the Rolling Stones. He’d text me photos from all kinds of shows he was attending during the year. The only thing Greg loved more than laughing was making other people laugh. When you were around him, that’s what you usually did. Most of all, Greg loved his family, especially his granddaughter Riley. There was no conversation that he didn’t immediately steer her way. I can scroll through years of text messages with him and watch her morph from infant to young lady. Here’s Riley learning to walk, Riley snuggling a puppy, Riley playing the violin, Riley singing, Riley smiling with her grandpa. She was the center of his universe. Today is an immeasurably sad day , not just for me of course but for the countless people who knew and worked with Greg all these years. When people die, you always hear tributes about how great they were and how much everyone liked them. But I’m telling you, in all my years in this business, I have never heard anyone say one negative thing about Greg Gumbel. As far as I could tell, his only character flaw was his disdain for Bruce Springsteen, but I loved him for that, too. It’s what made Greg, Greg. You see, there are some people that we work with that we get really close to. They are wonderful relationships that are professional yet intimate. Then there are those precious few who are our closest friends. We know everything about each other, including the really uncomfortable secrets. It is rare to have someone who populates both lists, but Greg Gumbel was that for me. Same with Clark Kellogg. The three of us sat at that desk in Studio 43 for two decades and became brothers. I’d like to believe the viewers could tell. I know there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of people in the broadcast business who are saying the same thing today. You don’t understand, I didn’t just work with Greg Gumbel, we were really good friends. I’m not just talking about on-air folks, either. Greg was one of those truly special people who achieve great fame and success but never look at other people and see “levels.” When Greg walked into a studio, he was good to everyone. It’s not that he was humble, he saw no reason to be humble. He was just one of the gang and happy to be there, only please don’t bring him a plate of eggs. Even when Greg got cranky, he couldn’t stay that way. He was, to say the least, a masterful broadcaster. He could manage complicated traffic better than anyone I’ve ever seen. This was especially evident in the days when CBS had the rights to all of the NCAA Tournament games. We would constantly move audiences from one site to another, which could get especially gnarly as games were winding down. Greg had to preside over all that chaos while Clark and I watched in awe, never quite sure what was going on. In all the years we worked the tournament together, I only saw Greg mess up once. He had told the audience they were going somewhere, but the producer sent them somewhere else. He got frustrated and tossed his pen into the air. This was my first year working for CBS and the moment felt awkward. Uh oh, now Mr. Gumbel is really going to get angry. Just then, a cameramen named Claus, who was one of Greg’s best friends, told him, “Hey, if you’re tired, let somebody know.” The whole studio broke up, with Greg laughing harder than anyone. Because of all the switching between games in progress, it was inevitable that some viewers would get ticked off. CBS got lots of angry calls. Greg was frequently the focal point of their ire. I lost count of how many times he played the voicemail from the man who was screaming, “That Greg Gumbel, he’s terrible! He should be fired!” It was one of many inside jokes we referenced during every future tournament. The first appearance I did for CBS was during the 2003 Final Four. They had invited me on for a segment during their Sunday studio show to talk about the impending coaching carousel. I sat in the production meeting and went over what I planned to say. When it was time for rehearsal, I was nervous and hyper and delivered my info way too fast. Greg interrupted me. “No no no, just talk the way you talked during the meeting,” he said. “Just relax.” The words had the intended effect and the segment went smoothly. From that point forward, he always knew just what to say to me and when to say it. I started my first full season with the network that December. My oldest son was born the following May. Over the next five years I had two more boys. They used to come visit me in the studio. I have all kinds of photos of the three of them with Greg and Clark, steadily getting bigger with each passing year. The producers recorded video from the studio cameras during those visits, so I have that footage, too. Greg teasing them, Greg helping them into his chair, Greg being sweet to my wife while needling me. My boys are 20, 18 and 15 now. Greg watched them all grow up. Heck, he watched me grow up. Most of all, Greg was kind and considerate. We did 19 Selection Shows together and after every one he sent me a text message before he boarded his flight praising me for my work. He liked good company, off-color jokes, sharp suits, hot food and a tasty cocktail or two. When Greg, Clark and I got together for our annual dinner at the Final Four, it was always a treasured experience. We talked about everything and laughed so hard we’d have to dab our eyes. I’ll remember Greg as someone who kept my confidence up and my guard down. I wanted to be just like him, someone who took his work seriously but never himself. Greg made waves several years ago when he said during a radio interview that broadcasters were overpaid because no one turned on the games just to watch us. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one in the industry who gently suggested that next time he had such thoughts, he should kindly keep them to himself. And of course, there was the classic moment when Clark, Wally Szczerbiak and I danced on camera with the emojis during the 2021 NCAA Tournament . Greg refused to partake. We recorded the dancing and when the camera cut back to a live shot of Greg, he sat there silently with a stone cold expression on his face that said, “Can you believe how ridiculous those guys looked?” I used a screen shot of that face as my Twitter avatar for a while. Not that Greg understood what that meant. The last thing he would ever do was join social media, which struck him as one big noisy parade. When Greg got some tough medical news late last year, the only thing he knew for sure was that he wanted to keep it quiet. He didn’t want the attention, the fuss, the distraction of everyone knowing. “I have no illusions about this,” he told me as he started treatment. “We’re going to give it a shot. It will either work or it won’t.” For those who knew and loved him — and there are so many of us — his passing leaves a void too vast to contemplate. I hope my life will always be good, but it will never be quite as good without Greg in it. I’ve known for a while that this day was probably coming, but now that it’s here, I can hardly believe it. Greg leaves behind a legacy that is virtually unparalleled in the sports broadcast business. He worked in multiple places at the highest levels, calling Super Bowls and Final Fours and countless games in between. If you watched him on TV and thought, “He seems like a great guy,” I’m here to tell you that you were right. You can’t be in front of a camera for that many hours over that many years and hide who you really are. And even if you could, Greg would have never tried. That’s because he knew that life is short and laughter is vital. He figured that if you showed up, tried your best and treated people well, then nothing else mattered. He was a unique talent, a treasured friend and the kindest man I have ever known. May his memory be a blessing. Seth Davis is the Editor-in-Chief of Hoops HQ, a new digital media company covering men’s and women’s college basketball . Davis is an award-winning writer and broadcaster, and since 2004 has been a host of CBS Sports and Turner Sports’ March Madness NCAA basketball tournament — where he worked alongside Greg Gumbel.Trump may have dodged his criminal cases — but a slew of civil lawsuits loom - POLITICO
Vance takes on a more visible transition role, working to boost Trump’s most contentious picksMONTREAL - A childhood friend of the Quebec man killed in a Florida boat explosion Monday said one of the victim’s sisters was among the other six passengers injured in the blast. Thi Cam Nhung Lê said 41-year-old Sebastien Gauthier was celebrating the holidays with his family when the explosion occurred in Fort Lauderdale. Lê said Gauthier’s older sister was also on the boat when it erupted into flames, and she was taken to a hospital. “It’s unimaginable, incomprehensible,” Lê said Saturday, adding that Gauthier’s family and mutual friends informed her about his death. Lê, 40, said she first met Gauthier in her early adolescence and they grew up together in Quebec City. She remembers him as a globetrotter who always had a smile on his face. “He’s still my best friend. It’s always him I call if I need something, but he’s no longer with us,” she said. The last time the two friends saw each other face-to-face was about two years ago, Lê said, but she last messaged Gauthier on social media in the days before Monday’s explosion. And on Jan. 1, her birthday, she would have expected a call from him, just like every year. “I’m shocked, surprised, and feeling a little bit of regret,” she said. “You regret not having seen him more. I spent yesterday crying. You can’t believe your friend disappears from one day to the next.” Earlier this week, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission confirmed that Gauthier died of his injuries in Broward County. The FWC said its preliminary investigation in Fort Lauderdale showed a 37-foot vessel exploded after its engines were started, injuring all seven passengers on board. Video posted on social media Monday showed the vessel engulfed in flames, with a thick column of black smoke billowing into the sky. However, Florida authorities have not provided The Canadian Press with more information about the investigation. Searching for an explanation has also left Lê angry. As she mourns the loss of her longtime friend, she said she’s still waiting for answers about what led to his unexpected death. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 28, 2024.