Jack dies. The earth moves.

Canada was rocked yesterday with news that Jack Layton, leader of the federal New Democratic Party, lost his battle with cancer. He was 61.

As leader of the perennial #3 party for the past eight years, he never became prime minister, never lorded over Parliament Hill, never tasted the ultimate pinnacle of power. His party, a somewhat left-leaning organization whose union-, family- and community-friendly policies often stood in stark contrast to the more fiscally strident focus of the Conservatives, has traditionally been just a little too far away from centrist to grab the attention of Canada's mainstream.

But here's the thing: Mr. Layton managed the impossible in a political career that spanned a generation and took him from Toronto city council to one of the most influential positions in federal politics. His everyman appeal and ability to relate the political process to the people it served helped him grow his party's fortunes during his leadership. The NDP served as an increasingly influential balancing factor in federal politics, a counter to the policies of opposing parties who often seemed to forget who they were serving.

Jack, as he was comfortably known, never seemed to forget. And it all paid off this last May when, in a stunningly historic victory, the party paved Quebec orange and became the official opposition for the first time ever.

I don't write this to be maudlin. I write it for perspective. Because as headlines screamed news of today's earthquake that touched most of the U.S. and Canadian east coast region, it occurred to me that some of us may have lost it.

Here's the bigger picture: On Sunday, a tornado destroyed the center of town in Goderich, Ontario. An employee at the Sifto salt mine, Normand Laberge, died as he tried to escape the lakeside boom crane he had been operating. Earlier this year, a magnitude 9.0 quake - over 1,000 times stronger than today's - and tsunami left 20,000 people dead or missing in Japan. Last year's Haiti quake (at 7.0, over 10 times as intense) left upwards of 85,000 people dead, a million homeless, and an already-decimated economy in an unimaginably worse shambles.

Somehow, watching office workers mug for the cameras that descended on the scene as they evacuated their buildings seems a little ridiculous given the real losses, large and small, faced by others. In the end, it was a harmless diversion. Let's define it as such, and let's move on. False drama doesn't become us. There's enough real drama - and real loss - to go around.

Your turn: Thoughts?