The battle over the budget
fades into obscurity. The debate about Canada’s role in Afghanistan seems
temporarily irrelevant. The U.S. election, a pas de deux on a darkened stage.
There’s nothing like a death
in the family to reduce your focus to… well, to nothingness, to the dark hole
left in your psyche when the grim reality of mortality is thrust once again
into the burning centre of your consciousness. Grief is best described in
tortured metaphors because grief tortures the soul and reduces rational thought
to the irrational cries of anguish that only grow silent with the passage of
time.
It’s too early in the process
for words of comfort, even if I had any idea what those words might be. There’s
no sense to be made from Kathy Barnett’s death in New Zealand, no comfort to be
found musing about how she was enjoying a holiday she and Bob had been looking
forward to for a long time. Death wasn’t part of the package and there’s no
solace in its sneaking in uninvited while she was engaged in something she
loved doing.
The pointlessness of her
death — a mismatched battle between car and bike — can’t diminish the rich
contribution of her life. And while it’s infuriating and presumptuous when
people in the throes of grief begin sentences with, “She would have wanted…”
there is one thing of which I am certain. Kathy Barnett was a pragmatist to her
soul. Through the pain and hurt, she’d have been the quiet, determined voice
that said, “Life goes on. We’ve got work to do.”
Part of the work we have to
do is to celebrate her life, comfort those most hurt by her death and be very,
very grateful our worlds overlapped hers for as long as they did. This town
will be reduced by her loss but it would have been far, far poorer for her
never having been here.
It took fierce determination
and a deep pool of belief for Kathy and Bob to quit their publisher and editor
roles at The Question and start Pique 13 years ago. The half-life of Whistler
papers — most of whose names I can’t even recall — seemed to be about four
erratically-spaced issues. As an outside observer, there was no reason to
believe Pique would be any different.
But there were invisible
differences. Better writing and better reporting were easy to see and, behind
them, the passion of a guiding hand that believed even a small local paper
could aspire to better writing and better reporting. There were investors who
believed in the vision and, more importantly, believed in the skill,
professionalism and business sense Kathy brought to the management side of
publishing and Bob brought to the editorial task.
Despite all of that though,
it was touch and go — more go than touch — the first few years. No one involved
with Pique made enough money to live on. That reality led to some very messy
battles between the founding partners.
It would have been a simple matter for most of us to admit defeat, pack
it in and move on to jobs that are so plentiful in this town. No one explained
that to Kathy. She wasn’t about to let go of the dream and the dream meant that
most of what the paper earned had to be reinvested in making it better.
So aside from the exhausting
task of publishing Pique every week, she kept doing what she’d been doing,
bookkeeping for Mario and Pascal among others. It meant long days but “What the
heck,” she’d say, “They feed me well.”
I can’t imagine how much
poorer Whistler would have been without that dogged determination. There’s an
illusion you can begin to succumb to if you stick around this town long enough.
It’s the success illusion. It’s hard to imagine Whistler as being anything
other than a successful resort. Most of the people who pass through have never
known it to be anything else. Many who live here haven’t been here long enough
to remember or haven’t met the people who witnessed the dream almost
collapse.
But all the success of this
place has come at the expense of someone’s hard work and sacrifice. While it’s
easy, looking at Pique’s year-end, 126 page bulk to imagine it’s always been
around and always been successful, that success has been due in large part to
the guidance Kathy’s provided and the atmosphere she’s helped create — an
atmosphere that’s allowed the paper to hold on to good people and, as one
former Piquester said, spin off untold numbers of graphic designers and website
creators into their own businesses.
So we’ve got a paper to put
out. We’ve got a life to celebrate. We’ve got an editor to comfort. And we’ve
got our personal and our collective grief to deal with. Let’s dry our tears
with laughter. Let’s drive grief away with proud and warm memories. Let’s
celebrate Kathy Barnett by our continuing appreciation of her contribution to
the social fabric of Whistler. This town’s suffered a great loss but it’s also
been left an ever greater legacy.
I am profoundly enriched by
having known and worked with Kathy. I’ll miss especially the glee I used to see
in her eyes on those rare occasions when I worried whether something I’d
written crossed the invisible line between biting commentary and personal
insult and she’d laugh and say, “Boy, you really gave it to ‘em this week.” I
knew if it tickled her it had to be okay.
Let’s start healing.
