In Jack Layton's birthplace of Hudson the flags were flying at half mast at city hall Tuesday, one day after the sudden passing of the NDP Leader following his second bout with cancer.

A book of condolences is starting to fill up there, as old friends remembered the Layton they knew before he became a national politician.

"He was just a really fun guy scampering around full of energy," said family friend Linda May. "He was definitely a doer."

At the school where Layton entered student politics for the first time, the former Hudson High School, the flags were lowered as well out of respect for a native son who never lost his pride for Hudson even though he made a name for himself in Toronto.

"People who have ever lived in Hudson, they always think of Hudson as their hometown," said Rod Hodgson, a local historian. "And he was a hometown boy."

A look through the Hudson High School 1967 yearbook shows a youthful Layton sending a message to his fellow graduates of where he was heading.

"I leave to become prime minister," Layton wrote as his goodbye line.

Layton fell just short of that goal in the 2011 election, leading the NDP to official opposition status with 103 seats in the House Commons.

More than half of those seats – 59 to be exact – came from Quebec, a province that became so enamoured with Layton's message that many voters cast ballots for candidates they had never even heard of before.

"It's a very rare thing in politics to see a political leader as liked as Jack Layton was," said Gazette Quebec affairs columnist Don MacPherson.

The orange wave that took over Quebec had Layton's fingerprints all over it, and now that he has passed on, the party needs to find a way to maintain that momentum ahead of the next election.

"Each MP from Quebec embodies the same values that Jack did," said Jamie Nicholls, MP for Vaudreuil-Soulanges. "We'll continue on with the same strategy."

The NDP will have Nycole Turmel, a rookie MP for Hull-Aylmer, as its interim leader until a leadership convention can be held, meaning the party will enter the next session of Parliament in an unprecedented role as official opposition without an elected leader.

Thomas Mulcair, the MP for Outremont, is considered by some to be the frontrunner for the eventual leadership of the party, a Quebec caucus member with experience who can perhaps unite the wave of rookie MPs from the province with the veteran core from the rest of Canada.

"This fall," Mulcair said, "we'll roll out a lot of legislation that's been promised with regard to giving real recognition to the Quebec nation within Canada."

While the future of the NDP appears a bit murky right now so soon after the death of its leader, there is no huge rush to figure out a new strategy with a majority Conservative government in place that has not even been in office for a year – meaning an election is still far off on the horizon.

"It happened early in the electoral cycle," MacPherson notes. "The NDP has three years ahead of it so it can adjust to its new role and grow into its new role."