A man who worked at Munro’s Bookstore in Victoria for 35 years and helped launch the city’s Earth Week events has been identified as the person who died on a transit bus last weekend.
Doug Koch, 66, left the bookstore on Government Street Saturday morning, saying he felt unwell. He gave a last fist-bump to a colleague, boarded the No. 15 westbound bus to his Esquimalt home, but suffered a heart attack en route.
Two ambulances were dispatched at about 10:30 a.m. to Esquimalt and Admirals roads and paramedics deployed a defibrillator and conducted chest compressions for about 35 minutes.
Munro’s announced the death of the “beloved friend and colleague” on its social-media page Sunday, inviting people to leave messages online or at the store, which hundreds have done.
Raised in Esquimalt, Koch was a fixture at the Government Street bookstore, where he was known for his kindness, his carefully curated sections including Poetry and Philosophy, and always having dog biscuits for his canine friends.
Former NDP leader Carole James said a visit to Munro’s “wasn’t complete without a hug and a conversation with Doug.”
An environmental and peace activist, Koch was best known as the organizer of the global Earth Week in Victoria that kicked off in April 1990. In those early years, it was the largest event in Canada and included a week full of activities, including a march down Government Street.
“We invited individuals and groups to show what they do every day of the year to contribute to the community’s well-being — both environmentally and socially,” Koch told the Times Colonist in 1994.
Koch, who didn’t own a mobile phone, was known to keep a written list of friends and colleagues’ birthdates.
“He never missed calling a co-worker [or friend] to sing happy birthday, most often leaving you a voicemail,” said Gillian Jones. “Years after I worked at Munro’s, he still called to sing.”
Michelle Brown Colistro said Koch’s poetry section was legendary and he always kept her book “face out” on display “even when it had most definitely stopped selling.”
Marianne Kelly said Koch regaled co-workers with stories of working on the railroads, hitchhiking across Canada, and the price of rent when he lived in Montreal.
“I think he might have been the only person I knew that didn’t own a cellphone and still had a VHS player,” said Kelly.
Former store owner Jim Munro, who died in 2016, continued weekly lunches with Koch after retiring in 2014.
His family is planning a post-secondary bursary in his name for an Esquimalt High student studying creative writing/philosophy.
