Danny Gail Dimm

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 8:10 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Ted McGrath

Danny Gail Dimm was born in Duncan, B.C., on Feb. 25, 1958. His father, Fred, and his mother, Eunice, both had two children from previous relationships, but Danny was their first child together. (Mike, his younger brother, came next.) “He was always a daydreamer,” recalls his sister, Jewel Juriansz. “And he adored animals. As a three-year-old, I fully expected he would grow up to be a vet.”

Danny inherited his father’s love for the outdoors. Fred was a woodsman and a pilot and a pipeline worker, and would often walk through the front door with souvenirs from the bush—from rattlesnakes to hornets’ nests. Eunice, a stay-at-home mom, was the family anchor. “Danny got a lot of his industry from her,” Jewel says. “He could work circles around most people, and he put his whole heart and soul into everything he did. He would run; he wouldn’t walk.”

After high school, Danny toyed with the idea of racing cars for a living; he even moved to Mont Tremblant, Que., the mecca of Canada’s Formula 1 scene. But by his early 20s, he was back out west, working as a tree faller in the town of Lillooet. “He was just a really quirky guy,” says Peter Ford, a close friend and fellow faller. “For somebody who was crawling around in the mountains all the time, he had a very, very broad knowledge base about a lot of different things. Even out in the woods, he would always have books by his side.”

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Obdulio Mateo Manalon Mineque

By Cynthia Reynolds - Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration By Team Macho

Obdulio Mateo Manalon Mineque was born in Quezon City, Philippines, on Sept. 21, 1950, to Obdulio Sr. and Lourdes; he was the third of six children. His father, a lawyer, worked as the postmaster general and his mother was a school principal.

When he was little, his mother called him “Chico,” Spanish for “small boy.” The nickname stuck. Growing up, Chico was heavily into sports. He liked martial arts, but excelled at baseball; as a teenager, he made the Philippine junior national team. He was good with his hands and taught himself to play piano and guitar, which he taught to his younger sister Wyn.

While studying architecture at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila during the civil unrest of the late ’60s and early ’70s, Chico became increasingly involved in student activism, joining the protests and revolts against the Ferdinand Marcos military regime. In 1974, he was detained and tortured. After his release, his family urged him to flee. With a bag full of dirty clothes, Chico landed in Toronto where his older brother Placido lived. He never believed he would stay—despite the predictions of a fortune teller who had once told him he would move to a foreign land and marry there.

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George Edgar Ronald Hewitt

By Kate Lunau - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 5:20 PM - 2 Comments

Illustration by Team Macho

George Edgar Ronald Hewitt was born on Dec. 4, 1950, to George and Rose Hewitt in Winnipeg, Man. George worked for Trans-Canada Air Lines (TCA), Air Canada’s predecessor, upholstering the insides of airplanes. Rose stayed home with their kids: George, Linda, Sharon, Wayne and June. George was always fascinated by planes. “My brother and I used to build model aircraft, fly them, break them and rebuild them,” Wayne says. George and his youngest sister, June, would play “pilot and stewardess,” Rose says. The Hewitts would go on trips to Florida or Mexico, and “even as a baby, I was on a flight somewhere,” says Wayne.

When George was about 13, he joined the Air Cadets, and at 16, won a scholarship to get his private pilot’s licence. After that, “he’d grab me and say, ‘Let’s go flying,’ and off we’d go,” Wayne says. In a rented Cessna, the brothers would fly around the city, “up the river and back.” In high school, George joined the reserves and got his jet licence, too. When Winnipeg hosted the Pan American Games in 1967, George—who was a member of his Air Cadet squadron’s honour guard—proudly raised the flag for Canadian swimmer Elaine Tanner, who won two gold and three silver medals.

George had set his sights on becoming a pilot. After high school, he went to Red River College in Winnipeg to take a business administration course, and “as soon as he finished that, Air Canada hired him,” Wayne says. “He was very, very excited—and I was excited, because he left his Opel GT [sports car] in the driveway.” George moved to Montreal, where he he met and married his first wife, Barbara; they had two children. As a commercial pilot, he started out flying domestically, but quickly advanced, and was soon flying overseas, too. “He had friends all over the world from flying,” Wayne says, and loved travelling to Australia or the Far East. George, who had an adventurous and competitive streak, also took up sailing, and participated in several regattas.

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Ryan Snutch

By Alex Ballingall - Wednesday, October 5, 2011 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Ian Phillips

Ryan Snutch was born in Ottawa on Dec. 22, 1984, six weeks sooner than expected. In the early hours of the morning, Ryan’s mother Kitty went into labour and was whisked off to the hospital by her husband, Don, leaving their house full of family and friends. After all, it was three days before Christmas.

Born at that moment of happy togetherness, Ryan carried this sentiment to others in the early years of his life. As a baby, when it was time for bed, he couldn’t fall asleep without holding onto one of his parent’s fingers. “You had to sit there with your hand through the crib,” recalls Don. When his little sister Kayla was learning to speak, Ryan would “translate” on her behalf, telling Kitty and Don that he could understand her because he still knew “baby talk.”

A few years later, when Ryan was in Grade 3, Don showed up at Ryan’s school for a volunteer appreciation day. He was approached by a woman who vigorously shook his hand and thanked him “for raising such a good boy.” Apparently, the woman’s son, who was in kindergarten, was dejectedly playing by himself one day. Defying all playground conventions of cool, Ryan veered away from his own friends to go join him. It was something that regularly happened as Ryan grew older: his parents learned much about Ryan’s good nature from the stories people would tell of his caring generosity. “People constantly come up to us and compliment us on our son,” says Don.

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Giovanna Quarin

By Kate Lunau - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Juliana Neufeld

Giovanna Quarin was born on Oct. 2, 1933, in Biauzzo, a village in Italy’s Friuli region, in the northeastern end of the country. Her father, Giovanni Ottogalli, died from appendicitis while mother Ida was pregnant with Giovanna; Ida was left to raise their daughter and son, Mario. (She later remarried and had another three boys.) By 13, Giovanna had left school to work full-time in the fields, and in a tobacco factory with her mother. “This was during the war,” says Rita Zoratti, Giovanna’s daughter. “They were quite poor,” but the family made do, raising rabbits to eat. In the night, Giovanna would sneak outside with a sickle in her hand and “steal grass” from a nearby landowner’s property to feed the animals, Rita says.

Giovanna dreamed of leaving her village, and at age 16, she left Biauzzo to work as a maid to a wealthy family in Florence. After four years she returned home, and struck up a correspondence with Luigi Quarin, a Friulan who’d moved to Canada (they were re-introduced through a mutual acquaintance). Luigi, who lived in Hamilton, Ont., “didn’t speak a lot of English,” Rita says, “and he wanted to marry an Italian girl.” In December 1954, Giovanna boarded a ship for Canada. She arrived on New Year’s Eve, and the couple was married on Jan. 29. The reception was held at Hamilton’s Venetian Club, where they were members.

Giovanna and Luigi moved into a house in the north of the city with Luigi’s parents and brother. “It was a very Italian community,” Rita says. “There was an Italian grocery store, an Italian doctor, and everybody on the street was Italian.” Luigi worked as a roofer, and Giovanna got a job at a candy factory until their kids were born. The first, Ed Quarin, came in 1955; Rita and Linda Viola followed. At home, the family spoke the Friulan language native to their region of Italy. “Our friends all spoke Friulano, and we sang in Friulano when we got together,” Ed says. Hamilton’s Friulan community was so big that they eventually splintered off from the Venetian Club to start their own, Ed says. The Famèe Furlane of Hamilton (the name translates to “Friulan family”) was founded in 1969; Giovanna was frequently at the club cooking food for events, helping with committees, or visiting friends.

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Harold Norman Lynge

By Richard Warnica - Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Julia Minamata

Harold Norman Lynge was born on a wheat farm in the fertile Regina Plains on March 29, 1922, the son of Amelia and Kristian, Lutheran immigrants from Jutland, Denmark. Kristian came to the New World in 1914. He worked in Chicago but returned home twice to woo his bride. Eventually, Amelia agreed to join him. She booked passage to Montreal in 1919. Later that year the two settled on a rented section of land just off the old Soo Highway between Drinkwater and Moose Jaw. Harold arrived three years later. His only sister Marie was born the next year. He had no brothers.

Harold grew up in a farmhouse without running water or electricity. There was never much money, Marie says, but always plenty of food. Amelia canned anything: potatoes, carrots, turnips, even chickens. But at harvest, it was her pies that drew crowds from neighbouring farms. Marie says she had a happy childhood. “But I’m not sure my brother felt the same way. He was a very intense person. He worried about mother and dad and the hardships they were facing.”

During the school year, Harold and Marie travelled by horseback more than six kilometres through the snow to a one-room schoolhouse. Harold rode the faster animal, a great brown beauty named Stuffy. Marie’s mare, Jessie, was older and slower. “When Harold was ill, I was thrilled because I could race his horse,” she says. The early exposure stuck with Harold. He was a dedicated horseman for most of his life. He “could ride anything on four legs,” says his wife, Amy.

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James Forrest Kienholz

By Michael Friscolanti - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 11:05 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Team Macho

James Forrest Kienholz was born in Nelson, B.C., on Sept. 12, 1946, the first of five siblings (Melvin arrived next, then Lorraine, David and Beverley). James’s father, Forrest, was a Greyhound bus driver; his mother, Malendar (neé Davidson), was the anchor of the family home. “I had a house full of kids all the time,” she says. “I always baked bread and buns on Monday mornings, and all five kids wanted to bring a friend home for cinnamon buns. I let them each to bring one, so that meant 10 kids every Monday morning.”

As a child, Jim was a natural athlete. He spent the summers playing baseball and soccer and anything else that kept him outdoors. When the kids went fishing on Kootenay Lake, Jim always took the time to bait his little sister’s hook. “We would collect grasshoppers from my grandmother’s backyard and use them for bait,” Lorraine remembers. The family had a cat named Mittens. Jim’s pet rabbit was Sniffles.

When he was 13, a family of refugees from the former Yugoslavia moved in across the street. Dan Skopac barely spoke a word of English, but Jim and his brothers welcomed him to Canada, sharing their Batman comic books and teaching him the language (good words and bad). “Jim was three years older, and I just thought he was such a cool guy,” says Skopac, who remained lifelong friends with the Kienholz boys. “He had his comb-back hair with the Brylcreem and he looked like James Dean and Edd ‘Kookie’ Byrnes and Fabian all rolled into one.”

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Suntharam Yogarajah

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at 11:55 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Marian Bantjes

Suntharam Yogarajah was born in Kamparmalai, a town on the northernmost tip of Sri Lanka, on Nov. 26, 1947, to Suntharam Yogarajah, a farmer, and Vairi Muthan, a housewife. The sixth of 12 children, Suntharam’s first job was selling his father’s banana, eggplant and carrot crops in the local market. At 22, he met 18-year-old Sivapackiam Arumugam at her high school in the nearby town of Parutharai. The two were so taken with each other that they decided to marry—one of the few couples in Kamparmalai to enter into a “love marriage” rather than one arranged for them. Their first child, a girl named Vansanthy, was born in 1970. Five more children, two sons and three daughters, followed.

Tensions grew between Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers in the late ’70s. Suntharam was used to seeing men abducted off the street, never to be seen again. In 1981, two years after their daughter Tharsini was born, he answered a knock at the door to find several Sri Lankan soldiers. He convinced them to leave him be by motioning to the baby in his arms. The soldiers moved on to his neighbours’ houses, rounding up other young men and bringing them to a vacant building. The soldiers then executed them, worried they would have otherwise joined the Tigers—the rebel group that went on to fight a 26-year war with the Sri Lankan government—if they hadn’t already.

As the eldest male in the house, Suntharam felt he was in grave danger, and soon fled to Singapore for three years. He moved to Canada in 1985, part of the first wave of Tamil refugees to come to these shores. He landed in Montreal alone on Aug. 11—he always remembered the date—and settled in an apartment in the city’s Snowdon district. His first job was distributing flyers door to door; he later worked as a printer and, finally, as a supervisor for the company that produced the flyers. In 1994 he had his entire family brought to Canada to live in the same apartment block.

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Christopher Michael Sheppard

By Stephanie Findlay - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Jack Dylan

Christopher Michael Sheppard was born on a wet, snowy, windy morning in Bay L’Argent, Nfld., on Feb. 6, 1978, to Rupert Sheppard and Patricia “Pat” Baker, the middle of four children. (Two years later, the couple would lose their second daughter Ruby to health complications.) Pat, whose father was a deep-sea fisherman, was a homemaker. Rupert, who grew up with 14 brothers and sisters, worked, among other jobs, with CP Rail in Ontario and the Canadian Coast Guard in Newfoundland.

Toddler Chris had a shock of shaggy, dark brown hair, like his dad, and emerald green eyes, like his mom. His grin was infectious. “Chris was a bit of a rambunctious fellow,” says Rupert, “but if he couldn’t make you smile throughout the day, then girl, you had a glass jaw.” Older sister Ann-Marie, Chris, and younger brother Jamie made an inseparable trio. “They had their little toughs every now and again,” says Pat, “but one protected the other.”

The Sheppards’ early stomping grounds were in Harbour Mille, an 18th-century fishing village on Newfoundland’s southeast shore. Days after school ended, the family would pile into their bright yellow wooden boat for the 20-minute ride across Fortune Bay to the cove where their small log cabin stood. “Me and my brother would be curled in the bow of the boat with a blanket over our heads and there’d be 14-foot waves,” says Jamie. “It was lots of fun. Giggles left, right and centre.”
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Ramesh Chandra Sharma

By Alex Ballingall - Thursday, August 18, 2011 at 9:45 AM - 2 Comments

Illustration by Julia Minamata

Ramesh Chandra Sharma was born in New Delhi on July 5, 1954, the second of 10 children raised in a Hindu family in the Yusuf Sarai neighbourhood, which in those days was a poor area of India’s capital.

Growing up, Ramesh, who always took great care in making sure his clothes were perfectly ironed, had a reputation for being the best-looking kid on his street. Neighbours called him “the movie star.” And he caught the eye of Charan Kabba, a girl who lived across the street. “He was very handsome,” she remembers. Over time, the pair fell in love. “He was very nice and he had good manners,” says Charan. “I loved him too much.”

It wasn’t easy for them to be together. Ramesh came from a Hindu family, while Charan’s family was Sikh. Charan’s parents didn’t approve. In 1980, Charan followed her sister to Canada. Ramesh, who had graduated from Punjabi University with a bachelor of arts degree, stayed behind and worked at the Japanese embassy before moving to Oman, where he found work as a security guard. During their separation, Ramesh wrote Charan more than 100 letters. Each one began the same way. “Dear darling sardarni,” he would write, referring to Charan using the religious title for a Sikh woman. In 1982, when back in India for a visit, the two eloped and were married in an unofficial ceremony. Ramesh was eventually able to join Charan in Victoria, where they had an official wedding in 1986.

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Bradley Jeffrey Prytula

By Alex Ballingall - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Team Macho

Bradly Prytula was born in Winnipeg on July 7, 1994, the second of two boys born to Daryl and Audry. The Prytulas live near Anola, a rural community just east of Winnipeg, where Daryl runs a welding shop named for his sons—Brody and Bradly’s Auto Body and Welding—and Audry is a caretaker with the Sunrise School Division. Their house, as Audry puts it, is “out in the middle of nowhere.” That’s the way Bradly loved it.

When he was a little boy, “you couldn’t tell him what to do,” says Daryl. “You’d tell him to turn right and he’d turn left.” Daryl would often pull Bradly and his older brother Brody on GT Sno Racers—sleds with steering wheels—behind his snowmobile. Bradly was always “the cocky one,” Daryl remembers, often playfully bumping into his big brother as they slid across the snow.

The family often visited Star Lake, Man., where Bradly’s grandfather has a cabin. It was there that Bradly started developing his reputation as a daredevil. “He was like Evel Knievel,” says Daryl. Bradly loved waterskiing, wakeboarding, tubing and, especially, dirt biking. “Nobody could ride a bike better than him,” says Daryl. “Bradly had a knack for it.” One winter, Daryl and Audry lit a big bonfire on the shore of the lake while their two sons roared across the thick prairie ice on the family’s two new snowmobiles. “He was active and happy. And he loved being outside,” says Audry.

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Sheilah Lorraine Wheeler Sweatman

By Alex Ballingall - Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 5:15 PM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Ian Phillips

Sheilah Sweatman was born in Winnipeg on Feb. 8, 1982, the third child of Wynn and Teddi Sweatman. Ever since Sheilah was a little girl, the Sweatman family has been frequenting their cottage at Lake of the Woods, a large body of water dotted with thousands of islands that straddles the Minnesota, Manitoba and Ontario borders. It was Sheilah’s favourite place. “I believe her heart lies at Lake of the Woods,” says her older sister Megan.

When Sheilah was three, Wynn remembers her hammering nails into the deck at their cottage. “All the other kids could walk around a work site,” he says, chuckling proudly. “Not Sheilah. Even at a young age, she was a participant.”

Sheilah’s “ fiery demeanour” first surfaced when she was a little girl. At the cottage, she was always dragging massive branches and logs out of the woods to help her cousins build “the biggest and best forts,” recalls Megan, and she was “always the first one in the water.” It was Sheilah who helped teach people to swim. She was also the go-to guide in the forest and the resident expert on catching fish. “She was our guide, in more ways than one,” says Megan. “She thought of everybody else before herself. Sheilah’s heart was never full.”

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Jason Richard Chenier: 1975 – 2011

By Jen Cutts - Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 1:45 PM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Marc Ngui

Jason Richard Chenier was born in Rouyn-Noranda, Que., on Aug. 17, 1975, to Richard, a miner, and Barbara. With “poker-straight” blond hair and big blue eyes, he was an outgoing kid, says his uncle, George Staszak. While younger sister Jennifer was the artistic one (once winning the family a trip to Ottawa with a drawing she entered in a Maclean’s contest, says George), Jason was the sporty one; often, the entire family would travel to cheer him on at out-of-town hockey games. When summer came, it was baseball, or fishing with George. If Jason didn’t like what Barbara was serving for dinner, says George, he’d “run two streets over to Granny’s house, and get fed whatever he liked there.”

In high school, Jason took summer jobs at the mine where Richard worked. He also inherited his dad’s habit of teasing people he liked, says Tracy Racine, who didn’t mind the attention. Though she was just 13 and three years behind Jason in the small English high school they attended, she couldn’t help developing a crush on the “loud” boy who was friends with her older brother, and prayed that she would one day marry him. But too soon, Jason left Quebec for Sudbury, Ont., to live with his grandmother (who’d moved) and attend Grade 13.

In 1994, Jay, as his friends had begun calling him, enrolled in Cambrian College’s mining engineering technician program. He shared an apartment with Rob Des Rivieres, who had the pleasure of being subjected to Jay’s practical jokes. One night, after drinking more than he’d planned at a keg party, Rob decided to sleep it off in his car. He awoke to find Jay had stuffed it to the roof with things from the neighbours’ yards: “Firewood, recycle boxes, garden gnomes. It was never just a low-end prank with Jay.” After they’d been in school for two years, nickel prices were surging and local mine Inco was paying for students to take the “common core” course that would certify them to work underground, says Bill Bennett, who also got to know Jay at Cambrian. Though Bill and others moved right from the course to jobs at Inco, Jay stuck with school and finished the last year of his program. By the time he graduated, the nickel market had turned down, and Jay wasn’t able to get on with Inco. He returned to Rouyn-Noranda, and worked a few short-term contracts at different mines in the area.

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Blue Gene Lonechild

By Emma Teitel - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:35 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Team macho

Blue Gene Lonechild was born in Vancouver on May 15, 1983, to his mother, Spirit Lonechild, a peace activist, and a father he would barely know. Blue was the eldest of Spirit’s three children and spent his first few years in a high-rise apartment with his mother and her best friend, Cindy, whom he called “Dad.” “I guess I was the more authoritarian one,” says Cindy. “Spirit usually said yes.”

Spirit vowed to give her son everything she never had. “I even let him pick the menu for all our dinners,” she says. “Beef liver was his favourite. He could eat a whole package in one sitting.” Blue met his biological father twice: once in Vancouver when, says Spirit, the man took Blue from his crib and staggered drunk down Davies Street dodging police cars, and again at 12, in an arranged meeting at Port Angeles Island in Washington. “Blue wasn’t impressed,” says Spirit.

Spirit and Blue moved to the Lazy River trailer court in Port Coquitlam, B.C., when Blue was three. Blue toured the trailer court grounds on his Big Wheel in the spring and skated the Coquitlam River in the winter. “We would sing all the way to the ice,” says Spirit. “A combination of native and English songs, but Tears in Heaven was one of his favourites.” Blue was bold and kind. He pulled his baby teeth out at the age of six and used the funds deposited under his pillow to buy his mother carnations. “He treated women with a gentleman kindness,” says Spirit.

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Terry Lee Pettigrew

By Stephanie Findlay - Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 7:00 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Juliana Neufeld

Terry Lee Pettigrew was born in Brandon, Man., on Sept. 7, 1952, the third of seven children, to Marvin, a brakeman for the Canadian Pacific Railway, and Helen, a nurse. In search of employment, Marvin moved the family “like gypsies” across Canada, all the while teaching his boys to play board games, fish, skate and camp. Seven years later, seeking permanence, the Pettigrews returned to Brandon, Marvin’s hometown.

Terry was a happy-go-lucky toddler like his older twin brothers, Garry and Larry, but couldn’t leave his terrible twos behind. As he grew, so did his temper. One day, when seven-year-old Terry was playing with the neighbourhood kids, he got hold of a small camping hatchet and in a fit took after one of his friends. Soon after, he threatened a different kid, this time with a rock. Marvin and Helen were at their wits’ end. They called social services, who advised them to place Terry in a group home. “That was about the only recourse I had, was to do something terrible to get something good done,” says Marvin. “Awful thing to have to do to get help, isn’t it?” Terry was eight when he moved into the home, where he stayed until he was 18. During that time, he didn’t see his parents once, and, even years later, never spoke with them about his time there.

But if Terry went in troubled, he came out smiling. With his twinkling blue eyes, straw-blond hair and lithe frame—he stood about five-feet-eight-inches tall—Terry took after his mother’s side: in his early 20s, he was the spitting image of granddad Harold Edward Appleyard, a jockey. After some stints up north working the oil rigs, Terry took a job as a groom at the Calgary Stampede race track. There, he met Bud Keizer, owner of a horse transport company in Calgary, in the late ’80s. “Some horses were very, very hard to handle,” says Bud, “he just seemed to do it without any problems.” For the next decade, Bud hired Terry as a truck driver transporting horses across Canada and the U.S. Often, Terry would have dinner with Bud and his wife, Patty. “I tried putting weight on him but boy could he eat,” says Patty. (Terry loved Patty’s fried chicken and befriended her two Maltese dogs). “I like people who like animals,” says Patty, “I think there’s a kindness to them a lot of people don’t have. He had a big heart, Terry did.”

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Virginia Dorothy Little

By Kate Lunau - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:10 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Julia Minamata

Virginia Dorothy Little (née Crossley), better known as Ginnie, was born on Oct. 12, 1942, to Leslie and Kathleen Crossley in Vancouver. Leslie worked as a mechanic and later as a letter carrier, while Kathleen stayed home with Ginnie and her younger brother Phil. “We used to sit in the bedroom, and she’d teach me how to whistle,” says Phil. “Ginnie was a hoot. She was always laughing and giggling.” Shirley George remembers “getting into trouble” with Ginnie, her lifelong best friend. They’d tie their hair in pigtails, “roller skate all over the place,” or go to the movies. “Singin’ in the Rain had just come out,” says Shirley, “and we’d go down Burrard Street singing songs.”

After high school, Ginnie got a job as a bank teller in downtown Vancouver. A co-worker introduced her to a navy man named Eric Badminton, and “they hit it off right away,” says Susan Fox, their daughter. The two were married in Eric’s hometown of Victoria on June 6, 1964; Susan was born in 1966, and brother Duane one year later. When Susan was in Grade 1, the family moved to Brentwood Bay, outside Victoria; Ginnie stayed home with the kids while Eric continued in the navy. He was often away, but returned in the summer “so we could go camping,” says Susan. On those week-long trips, “my dad would go fishing every day, and my mom would read.”

In 1988, Susan got married—and her parents got divorced. “For the most part, they’d been happy together,” she says, “but they were two different people.” Ginnie, who’d gone back into banking, handled it well: “She got an apartment in downtown Victoria,” Susan says, “and went to work.” Several years later, Eric passed away. At his funeral, a man named Don Little, who’d been Eric’s commanding officer, approached Ginnie to give his condolences. She’d briefly met Don before, and “thought my dad was not a nice man,” says Karen Pelletier, Don’s daughter. She must have changed her mind, though. Not long after the funeral, Don paid her a visit at the bank, and asked her out on a date; on Oct. 22, 2001, they were married.

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Geoffrey Ernest Yellow

By Michael Friscolanti - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 9:35 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Team Macho

Geoffrey Ernest Yellow was born in Hamilton on Nov. 16, 1955, the first son of Ernie and Frances Yellow (née Tait). His father, an Englishman who moved to Canada after the Second World War, was a millworker at Stelco; his mother, originally from Scotland, worked as a newsroom secretary at the Hamilton Spectator before leaving to raise her children. (John was born next, then Mary.)

Like so many toddlers, Geoff adored the television show Romper Room, which featured “Ms. Lois” reading to groups of children and peering into her magic mirror. “He wanted to be on that show so badly, so I wrote in,” Frances remembers. “Sure enough, we got the call.” The program was taped at a downtown Hamilton studio, but because the Yellows didn’t own a car, Geoff’s dream-come-true required some early morning bus rides. “He thought it was wonderful,” Frances says. “He got to be a TV star for two weeks.”

When Geoff was 11, the family moved to Grimsby, a small town on the tip of Niagara’s wine region. He taught his little brother to fish in Forty Creek and skate without holding on to a chair. When they were teenagers, he took John to his first rock concert: Alice Cooper. “He was three years older, but he never minded me tagging along,” John says. Once, during a visit to the Canadian National Exhibition, Geoff won a giant stuffed giraffe. “People offered him money for it,” says Mary Dancer, his little sister. “But he came home and gave it straight to me. I am in my 40s now, and I still have that darn giraffe.”

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Donald Rayworth Crandall

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 12:55 PM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Juliana Neufeld

Donald Rayworth Crandall was born on Oct. 19, 1926, in Moncton, N.B., to Milton and Mary Crandall, the youngest of three boys. The family loved to sail, and Milton, an automobile parts dealer, built several sailboats. When Donald was 14, a three-masted schooner came into Moncton with a load of lumber. “The captain had engine troubles and approached dad for help,” says Bud Crandall, Donald’s brother. “They became fast friends,” and Donald befriended the man’s young son. At the end of his stay, the captain suggested that Donald sail back to Turks and Caicos with them—and his parents agreed. The three months Donald worked as a deckhand in the Caribbean turned out to be one of his most memorable adventures.

Donald served in the navy during the Second World War, and then attended Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B. In 1949, he took a job with Air Canada, working in market research and training. The position suited his outgoing personality and love of travel, since it sent him across Canada and to the Caribbean. In 1950, he married Frances, a kindred spirit: like Donald, she’d grown up in Moncton, served in the navy, and attended Mount Allison. After their children Louise and Hugh were born, the family settled in Montreal. Donald and Frances were “absolutely devoted” to each other, says daughter Louise.

When Frances was in her fifties, she started developing symptoms of Alzheimer’s. At 57, Donald retired from his job at Air Canada, “largely to look after her,” says Louise. They sold the house in Montreal and moved back to Moncton, but the couple didn’t like to talk about Frances’s health; Donald carried the burden of her care largely by himself. “He never complained that it was hard, and never asked for help,” Louise says.

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William Quintero Martinez

By Kate Lunau - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 at 9:55 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration by team macho

William Quintero Martinez was born on Dec. 2, 1993, to Eduardo Quintero and Floralba Martinez Romero in Tocancipá, outside the Colombian capital of Bogotá. “We lived in pretty little cottage in the mountains, with a nice view,” says Floralba, who stayed home with the kids (William’s big sister, Esperanza, was three years older) while Eduardo ran an importing business. “We had a chauffeur and a cleaning lady; the chauffeur would drive us into the capital, and Eduardo to his office.”

When William was still a baby, his father died suddenly. Later, Floralba told her son that he’d been killed in a car accident, but that wasn’t the case. “I didn’t want to upset him,” she says, “but his father was assassinated by the chauffeur,” who planned to steal the family’s car. The chauffeur, a teenager at the time, spent two years in prison. Floralba was devastated. “I couldn’t live in the house where William’s father died, so I stayed with my sister in the capital,” she says, and eventually rented an apartment there. She got a job as a hairdresser, and as an office receptionist. “I felt like I was finally starting over, because I had my two children with me, and a job.” But when William was a toddler, tragedy struck again: while on vacation with another family member, his sister Esperanza drowned in a pool. Floralba sank into a deep depression and “couldn’t eat or sleep,” she says. “I thought a lot about William’s future, and knew I had to get better for him. He was my life.” After Esperanza’s death, a psychologist visited with William—a loving, social child—and told Floralba, “He’ll be okay.”

When William was still young, Floralba paid two visits to Montreal, where she knew other Colombians who’d emigrated. “I decided that I had to leave Colombia because there were too many memories,” she says. “I started thinking I’d like to go to Montreal so that William could grow up there, where it’s safe, and we could start over.” When her son was five years old, they boarded a plane for Canada—this time, to set up a new home. “It wasn’t hard for him at all,” she says. “In the plane, I told him, ‘We’re going to a country where there’s snow, like in the movies.’ He was very excited.”

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Kassandra Marie Kaulius

By Kate Lunau - Wednesday, May 18, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 3 Comments

Illustration by Julia Minamata

Kassandra Marie Kaulius was born on June 27, 1988, in North Vancouver, to Victor, who worked for a local bakery, and Markita, a recreation centre employee. The family, who lived in nearby Surrey, already had two children, Miranda and Nicholas; because of earlier complications, Markita “wasn’t supposed to have any more children,” Victor says. “Kassandra was a bit of a miracle.”

From the moment she was born, Kassandra was a joyful child who loved playing with her brother and sister—especially, Markita says, “anything to do with sports.” When she was just two, her mom says, “she’d run out to the garage in her pyjamas, get her brother’s lacrosse stick and put his hockey helmet on, and say, ‘Come play, Come play!’ ” That year, she asked for a basketball. By age 3, she was in the backyard, swinging a baseball bat, Victor says, yelling, “I’m hitting a home run!” Kassandra and Nick would recruit their dad to be “ringmaster” for their wrestling matches, or they’d play ninja and He-Man. At the same time, Miranda says, “She could be a really girlie-girl.” By age 5, Kassandra was playing T-ball, and she loved football, hockey, swimming—anything that got her moving. “It’s not that she was the world’s best athlete,” Victor says. “She just loved playing sports.” And did she like school? Her entire family chuckles. Victor says, “She liked P.E.”

In high school, Kassandra competed on the volleyball and basketball teams, but softball—and especially pitching—became her passion. Her team won the provincial championships, and went on to win a national silver medal in 2004. “Kassandra would help out the younger girls,” says her cousin Darren Kaulius, 42, a coach with the Surrey Storm fast-pitch softball league, where Kassandra played (and eventually coached, too). “My daughters are close in age to her, and the reason they play ball is because of her,” Darren says. “They saw how much fun it could be, and how great you can look in a uniform.”

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David Stewart Arthur Cleverley

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 9:15 AM - 1 Comment

Illustration by Team Macho

David Stewart Arthur Cleverley was born on March 30, 1985, in Prince George, B.C., the fourth child and only son for Donald, a teacher, and Lori, a bank manager. When David was three, the Cleverleys moved to Ontario. The pulp mill in Prince George had set off David’s sister Megan’s allergies, and Don’s entire family settled in Cambridge. The Cleverleys were a tight-knit bunch and spent summers in their white minivan, criss-crossing North America on road trips and singing Hey Jude and Walking on Broken Glass at the top of their lungs.

When he was four, Lori found David on the roof of the house. “It’s okay, mom! I got my Superman shirt on,” he yelled down. After that, he was known as “Superman” to friends and family. He was “absolutely fearless,” says Lori. On instinct, he’d throw himself into any body of water he came across—lakes, quarries, pools. When visiting his cousin Ben in Vancouver, he’d sneak into UBC’s outdoor pool at night to dive off the 10-m board.

School wasn’t really his thing—which was tough, because his sisters were all straight-A students—but sports sure were. Football was his passion. David, who had a vertical that made coaches drool, was tailor-made for the wide-receiver position. He was supremely confident and, with his larger-than-life personality, became a vocal team leader with the Cambridge Lions, the local under-19 team. He’d started attracting interest from schools in the U.S. and Canada, and his final season with the Lions was his moment to shine. But in the second game of the season, while returning a kick, David was dropped by a brutal hit, ruining his shoulder. In that instant his career was ended, leaving a gaping hole in his life.

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Anthony Joseph McColl

By Stephanie Findlay - Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 1:45 PM - 4 Comments

Illustration by Ian Phillips

Anthony Joseph McColl was born in Gatineau, Que., on March 11, 1992, the first of two children to David, a manager at an Ottawa travel agency, and Monica Thibault, a social worker at an Ottawa health centre. He quickly stood out for his strength. Still in the hospital—he was being monitored in an incubator for fear of being diagnosed with diabetes like his mother—his father was doing his first diaper change when the newborn grabbed hold of the metal rail. “He just managed to grab hold of it and he was about to pull himself off the change table,” says Dave. “He was incredibly strong.”

With big cheeks, a mop of strawberry-blond cherub curls and a boisterous spirit, toddler Anthony was energetic, physical and gregarious. His family nickname, Ant, was incongruous with his bigness. “People would say, ‘Why isn’t he talking?’ ” says Monica, who says strangers would peg him at seven or eight. “Sorry to disappoint you,” she’d say, “but he’s three.” In 1995, sister Alanna was born. “He would rub my tummy and talk to her,” says Monica. “He wanted to help me give her first bath.”

Exposed to art by his family (his father was an avid photographer), Anthony became interested in things Japanese, drawing from Miyazaki films and characters from Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon. His interest in the arts would span from music—he became a vocalist in a screamo band—to video. In his early teens, without any formal training, he and three of his closest friends began work on Bow chicka wow!© productions. The 15-year-olds would use the camera Anthony’s parents lent him to “film and make dumb jokes,” says Nicolas Moncion, one of the friends. “It was his camera so he was the one doing the edits—that showed a lot of his leadership skills. The video turned out great.”

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The End | Htoo K'Bru Paw | 2000-2011

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 7:50 AM - 5 Comments

Illustration by Marian Bantjes

Htoo K’Bru Paw—”Bright Flower”—was born on March 19, 2000, at Mae Rama Luang refugee camp in western Thailand. Htoo, pronounced “Too,” was one of 13 children born to Say Ler Moo and Poe Gay, rice farmers from Burma’s persecuted Karen minority. Her parents had fled Burma just before Htoo’s birth. For years, the family had been on the run in the jungle, surviving on rice broth and bamboo shoots, never speaking above a whisper, hiding from the military, who’d razed their village, and slaughtered their relatives.

Although Mae Rama was a dirty, tightly packed refugee camp with no electricity or plumbing, it was paradise, says Poe Gay. The family was safe at last. They lived in a one-room bamboo hut, two metres above the ground. Sometimes, the bamboo would rot and you’d fall through the floor, Poe Wah, Htoo’s eldest brother, explains—far better, he adds with a smile, than falling into the outhouse. They ate rice, though there was never enough. Over time, Poe Gay acquired eight chickens, which she sold to supplement their rice rations; it was the first time she had ever seen money. The kids had no shoes, and were often sick. At any given time, 40 per cent of the camp’s children were ill with malaria, TB, or chronic diarrhea. Death was all around them.

Htoo’s world ended at the grey fence surrounding the camp. She didn’t have any toys: her prized possession was a collection of stones she’d amassed over the years. School, her great love, was an infrequent luxury. Once, she misplaced a textbook, and was inconsolable. Htoo, wise and funny and a whiz with her younger siblings, always kept the family laughing and happy. That was her role, her brother explains. She was their warm soul.

When Htoo was eight, Canada offered to take the family in. Each underwent medical testing. That’s when Htoo’s parents learned she had thalassemia, a genetic blood disease. She’d worked so hard caring for everyone, no one had realized she herself had been hurting. She immediately began blood transfusions. The camp hospital was grotesque. The sick were squeezed into one room, some screaming in pain. Drips were hooked to rotting thatched walls. Infections were constant. Once, Htoo awoke to find the woman lying next to her had died in her sleep. But soon, she would leave all this behind.

The journey to the Bangkok airport took five days. The only food Htoo’s parents could afford for the trip was a bag of chips. Inside, there were 12 chips: one for each child. On June 27, 2008, Htoo’s family landed in Langley, B.C., with no English, or any experience with the world outside of a refugee camp. Htoo entered Grade 4 at Nicomekl Elementary. Every afternoon, she and her sisters studied together, memorizing vocabulary lists, grammar rules and reciting Scripture. No one worked harder than Htoo, who always placed first at the Karen Heritage School, where she took weekend classes.

She learned to skate and play soccer, and flourished. Her health improved so much that doctors suggested a bone marrow transplant to cure her, thus ending monthly blood transfusions and visits to hospital. Poe Wah, it turned out, was a perfect match, and in June, Htoo underwent surgery.

By mid-July, she’d regained her strength, and doctors were set to release her when she caught an infection. By August, she was near death, but fought it and won. But constant infections meant her siblings couldn’t visit. Nurses hooked up a webcam; back in Langley, her family scrambled to borrow a matching set-up. The day the cameras went live, Htoo’s siblings rushed to take turns speaking to their favourite sister. As the novelty wore off, they resumed their routines. But no one turned off the camera. For hours, Htoo sat hugging the laptop to her chest, listening as her sisters recited their vocabulary lists and her brothers chattered away.

At Christmastime, she took a turn for the worse, and in January was admitted to the ICU. Htoo, wise beyond her years, understood how sick she really was. Only at the very end did she finally allow herself to cry. “I just want to see my brothers and sisters,” she told her dad, her voice barely a whisper. “I don’t want to die yet.” But she just didn’t have any fight left. Her family gathered round her bed; when Htoo could no longer open her eyes, she would squeeze her siblings’ hands. On Feb. 3, Htoo, who’d survived infection and disease in some of the ugliest hospitals in the world, died in Canada, of an infection, at one of the world’s best. She was 11 years old.

The end: Alysa Naomi Rotstein | 1981-2011

By Jen Cutts - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 9:05 AM - 1 Comment

Illustration by Team Macho

Alysa Naomi Rotstein was born in Hamilton on Jan. 30, 1981, the first-born for Simone, an elementary schoolteacher, and Ed, a psychiatrist. At eight months, Simone and Ed noticed that Alysa would topple over when trying to sit, and favoured her left arm; doctors later diagnosed cerebral palsy, though “a mild right-sided weakness is what we called it,” says Ed. Brother Joshua was born two years later, and Simone remembers teaching them to climb the stairs at the same time. Brother Ben came along in 1985.

Alysa was a curly-haired and imaginative child, spending hours in the yard inventing adventures with neighbourhood kids. Summers were spent at a left-leaning Jewish camp, where Alysa pushed herself to “pull her own weight” with camp duties, says Simone, and where she formed a passion for “changing the world.” At 14, Alysa, who loved writing, won a city-wide contest for her poem about a homeless man, displaying early on an empathy that would shape her work and friendships.

After high school, Alysa spent a year in Israel, working on a kibbutz and volunteering. On her return, she began a bachelor’s in social work at McGill. Inspired by the Shabbat dinners she’d enjoyed at the home of a Montreal family, Alysa began hosting her own Shabbat potlucks. “Alysa loved to sit around a table and share food,” says friend Jenny Cohen. Everyone and all faiths were welcome, and Alysa would preside over the sharing of “highlights and lowlights” of the past week. With her warmth and signature laugh (like “staccato hiccups,” says Jenny), Alysa brought people together and made friends effortlessly.

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