At long last, the saga of the Van(vanvan) has drawn to its ultimate--inevitable--conclusion.  After weeks of research and far too many long conversations with the Canadian Border Services Agency, Importation Canada, and other less savory organizations, we have managed to do what apparently no other person has ever attempted before in the history of Canada:  we have legally disposed of a vehicle brought into the country on a temporary importation.  The trick, we discovered, is to donate it to charity....and so donate it to charity we did;  the Vanvanvan will do some good in the world at long last, as it is broken down into its constituent parts, and auctioned off in suport of the Canadian Cancer Society. 

It was with some sadness that I said goodby to the Van this morning...not for the vehicle itself, but for the dream which it represented.   A dream which it was destined to never live out.  The Van, at the end, was sufferring...it was in pain....it begged to be allowed to leave gracefully, on two of its four wheels.  I know that wherever it has gone, it is now happy, knowing that it will be doing the only thing that ever gave it joy: helping people. 

And so, dear friends, I beg a moment of reflection.  Let us consider the good that the Van did in this world.  An icon to sustainable living, it sat--undriven--for two years on the side of the road, its solar panels proudly proclaiming a desire to live in a world that  embraced green energy, even as its immobility made an understated statement: "I'm burning no fossil fuels while I sit here.  I could be, but I'm not."  Let us consider its desire to nurture all life forms, and its particular fondess for the various fungal spores which took up residence beneath the shelter of its camper shell in the final years of its life.  The van did not judge these tiny visitors, but instead provided them with an environment in which they could flourish, reproduce, and perhaps even begin to evolve.  A more caring, gentle soul, never rode on four wheels.  It is with a heavy heart that I place the final images of the Van into the immortal ether of the internet, there to circulate in a cloud of oscillating electrical impulses for all of time.  I commend the Van's final image to the great seas of the world web, whose strands touch us all. 

Goodbye, and godspeed.