So many people ask with genuine interest trying to determine how we are doing as individuals and as a family. There is no honest answer to the question: ‘How are you?’ without capturing the immense sadness and on-going pain we still feel on a daily basis. We appreciate the question, especially from those who are brave enough to listen to our answer, as it recognises that like a deep, sutured wound, the scars run deep and will be a continual backdrop to our lives. Time is a healer and life does go on; however, unexpected triggers open up the wounds of loss in surprising moments.
Friends and our communities have been instrumental in helping us negotiate the healing process and people have been remarkable in finding ways to remember our daughter. These then are the ways that our communities continue to remember Erin…
Furry Creek Bench and Daffodils
In November 2015, the Furry Creek community emerged on a blustery winter’s day to plant daffodils along the Sea-to-sky highway and Furry Creek Drive. In March Spring burst out with the flowering of the first wave of spring flowers that announced the ongoing presence of our daughter in our community and to Whistler travellers. Her life and radiance will bloom every year, an annual reminder of the cycle of life and the beauty around us – and how much we miss her.
Our children have grown up with astonishing beauty of Furry Creek as a backdrop to their lives; the beauty inter-twined in to our family time, game-playing and friends’ play-dates. On sunny spring afternoons, the children and I would in the early years take their little black plastic scooters, lugged out by Mike’s sister from SA in her luggage allowance, and would whizz down precipitously steep golf course paths to the rugged beauty of Furry Creek beach. Over time, scooters were replaced with bicycles and running feet. Howe Sound stretches out in all directions guarded by the imposing snow-covered glacial mountains and the weather provides a shift in atmosphere between the seasons – autumnal colours; enticing shimmering sea in the summer and the blustery starkness of the winter when the winds rage and lash at the coastline. The logs washed up on the beach were natural play structures for balancing as if on a tight-rope or as a natural backdrop for our annual autumnal photographs recording the children’s growth. The Furry Creek Community Association provided a bench, a hand-hewn one that blends into the exquisite surroundings that overlooks the beach where I used to play with the children. The bench overlooks where Erin used to pose and play on the logs, and where her childhood shouts of joy resounded; it now offers a place for contemplation and solitude for others and us as we reflect on her life and the cavernous gap she has left behind.
Pauline Johnson Playground: Erin Kate Moore Memorial
When we lost Erin, many asked us whether they could make a donation in her memory. She so loved her French Immersion School, and as passionate educators we wanted to do something to support education and benefit her school. The Parents Advisory Committee had embarked on a fund-raising project (and continue to fund-raise) to develop an outdoor playground, both for the school and the community’s use. What particularly inspired us about this project, designed by famous landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander, was that one section of it incorporated climbing logs into the play structure. The climbing logs encourage children to take risks in their play, are entirely natural - replicating the wooden logs Erin used to play on at Furry Creek beach – and focus on engaging children in the outdoors which is the arena for our family leisure time.
It is a perfect project for remembering our daughter who relished her time on the school’s monkey bars - and for providing a venue for children living in the moment engaged in the glorious activity of play. You can read more about the playground plans including the Erin Kate Moore memorial section of the playground at http://www.pjcommunitypark.com/erin-kate-moore/ as well as in the newspaper article about the project: http://www.nsnews.com/news/erin-kate-moore-memorial-in-plans-for-ecole-pauline-johnson-playground-1.2222477 - sthash.cwlEm4vG.dpuf
Michael Li, a local artist, has painted a beautiful picture of an angel, replicating Erin. He has overseen the organization of a Paint Night to raise funds to support the playground project and a local Syrian refugee family. Michael will lead the group with step-by-step instructions on how to complete the painting. You can read the details of the event and view the beautiful painting here: https://paintnite.com/events/1047590.html
Erin’s Friends’ Dance Performance
I served 4 years on the Lion’s Bay Events committee which organised events in the community – approximately one each month including Santa’s breakfast, Easter Egg hunt, Halloween Party; Garden Show and the New Year’s dip. One of the annual events was the Arts Recital or Talent Show where the children of the village demonstrated their talent. Erin’s inspiring Grade Two teacher at Pauline Johnson School, who she had for just 4 months before her accident, had her Grade 2 class dance to Katy Perry’s Fireworks as an energy release during the day. By the end of Grade 2 it had become a bonding item with the class and any time the song was put on during a play-date, they’d snap to it and start performing the dance.
One Erin’s of friends who was in her Grade 2 class and a fellow Brownie, wanted to perform this dance at the talent show this year in Erin’s honour and remember her to the audience gathered in the Village Hall. She asked around at school and there were many children who wanted to join in. Their Grade 2 teacher from the previous year was recruited, all by the children themselves, and they started ‘rehearsing’ with her during recess. It wasn’t as if they really needed rehearsing after a year of practice, but the children loved it. At the performance, Erin’s friendship group introduced themselves as Erin’s classmates from PJ, saying that she used to do this dance with them, that they miss her, and they wish that she were on stage with them. The friend’s mother, who has been a tremendous support to me and our family over the past year, writes: ‘This has been brought tears to my eyes so many times. Erin should have been on that stage, having had all the fun of practicing, the thrill of special times with her teacher, and should have been watching the pride and joy on her parents’ faces. It should not be something we should be forced to imagine’. We concur. Looking back at photos and video over the year we appreciate how much Erin loved dancing, singing and movement (view: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zy2dwdxkh399jkn/IMG_1376.MOV?dl=0). She surely was dancing at that performance, too, an unseen, silent guest demonstrating the same gay abandon and verve as she did in real life...
Erin’s friendship bench
In my second year of being in BC, I was Head of School at a school for gifted children. The school had a wonderful family atmosphere and teachers, students and parents were intimately connected in nurturing and educating these special children. We were invited to the school on the 16th April to attend a ceremony commemorating our sparkly daughter. The students sang, played musical instruments, talked about friendship and then unveiled a ‘Friendship Bench’. The bench is for students who are feeling lonely or left out and by sitting on it, the child indicates to his/her school-mates the need for friendship or reaching out from school mates. What an appropriate way to honour Erin who was always looking out for others’ needs and connecting to include others in her play!
These tributes to our daughter have been prolific; Erin has not disappeared in to the ether, a nomadic traveller in to an unknown land, but rather her spirit and her vibrancy have been translated into the world around us in so many remarkable ways. Many have commented how the natural world that claimed her conjure memories of our girl – through sunrises and sunsets, snowflakes, flowers, Spring. Her energy has translated into many different forms running parallel to those continuing the life from which she was prematurely removed. We are deeply moved by those that continue to stand by us and support us.
Erin’s live, love and laughter continue to live on in and will be remembered in ways that you and I will not be remembered. And that is profoundly comforting.
Friends and our communities have been instrumental in helping us negotiate the healing process and people have been remarkable in finding ways to remember our daughter. These then are the ways that our communities continue to remember Erin…
Furry Creek Bench and Daffodils
In November 2015, the Furry Creek community emerged on a blustery winter’s day to plant daffodils along the Sea-to-sky highway and Furry Creek Drive. In March Spring burst out with the flowering of the first wave of spring flowers that announced the ongoing presence of our daughter in our community and to Whistler travellers. Her life and radiance will bloom every year, an annual reminder of the cycle of life and the beauty around us – and how much we miss her.
Our children have grown up with astonishing beauty of Furry Creek as a backdrop to their lives; the beauty inter-twined in to our family time, game-playing and friends’ play-dates. On sunny spring afternoons, the children and I would in the early years take their little black plastic scooters, lugged out by Mike’s sister from SA in her luggage allowance, and would whizz down precipitously steep golf course paths to the rugged beauty of Furry Creek beach. Over time, scooters were replaced with bicycles and running feet. Howe Sound stretches out in all directions guarded by the imposing snow-covered glacial mountains and the weather provides a shift in atmosphere between the seasons – autumnal colours; enticing shimmering sea in the summer and the blustery starkness of the winter when the winds rage and lash at the coastline. The logs washed up on the beach were natural play structures for balancing as if on a tight-rope or as a natural backdrop for our annual autumnal photographs recording the children’s growth. The Furry Creek Community Association provided a bench, a hand-hewn one that blends into the exquisite surroundings that overlooks the beach where I used to play with the children. The bench overlooks where Erin used to pose and play on the logs, and where her childhood shouts of joy resounded; it now offers a place for contemplation and solitude for others and us as we reflect on her life and the cavernous gap she has left behind.
Pauline Johnson Playground: Erin Kate Moore Memorial
When we lost Erin, many asked us whether they could make a donation in her memory. She so loved her French Immersion School, and as passionate educators we wanted to do something to support education and benefit her school. The Parents Advisory Committee had embarked on a fund-raising project (and continue to fund-raise) to develop an outdoor playground, both for the school and the community’s use. What particularly inspired us about this project, designed by famous landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander, was that one section of it incorporated climbing logs into the play structure. The climbing logs encourage children to take risks in their play, are entirely natural - replicating the wooden logs Erin used to play on at Furry Creek beach – and focus on engaging children in the outdoors which is the arena for our family leisure time.
It is a perfect project for remembering our daughter who relished her time on the school’s monkey bars - and for providing a venue for children living in the moment engaged in the glorious activity of play. You can read more about the playground plans including the Erin Kate Moore memorial section of the playground at http://www.pjcommunitypark.com/erin-kate-moore/ as well as in the newspaper article about the project: http://www.nsnews.com/news/erin-kate-moore-memorial-in-plans-for-ecole-pauline-johnson-playground-1.2222477 - sthash.cwlEm4vG.dpuf
Michael Li, a local artist, has painted a beautiful picture of an angel, replicating Erin. He has overseen the organization of a Paint Night to raise funds to support the playground project and a local Syrian refugee family. Michael will lead the group with step-by-step instructions on how to complete the painting. You can read the details of the event and view the beautiful painting here: https://paintnite.com/events/1047590.html
Erin’s Friends’ Dance Performance
I served 4 years on the Lion’s Bay Events committee which organised events in the community – approximately one each month including Santa’s breakfast, Easter Egg hunt, Halloween Party; Garden Show and the New Year’s dip. One of the annual events was the Arts Recital or Talent Show where the children of the village demonstrated their talent. Erin’s inspiring Grade Two teacher at Pauline Johnson School, who she had for just 4 months before her accident, had her Grade 2 class dance to Katy Perry’s Fireworks as an energy release during the day. By the end of Grade 2 it had become a bonding item with the class and any time the song was put on during a play-date, they’d snap to it and start performing the dance.
One Erin’s of friends who was in her Grade 2 class and a fellow Brownie, wanted to perform this dance at the talent show this year in Erin’s honour and remember her to the audience gathered in the Village Hall. She asked around at school and there were many children who wanted to join in. Their Grade 2 teacher from the previous year was recruited, all by the children themselves, and they started ‘rehearsing’ with her during recess. It wasn’t as if they really needed rehearsing after a year of practice, but the children loved it. At the performance, Erin’s friendship group introduced themselves as Erin’s classmates from PJ, saying that she used to do this dance with them, that they miss her, and they wish that she were on stage with them. The friend’s mother, who has been a tremendous support to me and our family over the past year, writes: ‘This has been brought tears to my eyes so many times. Erin should have been on that stage, having had all the fun of practicing, the thrill of special times with her teacher, and should have been watching the pride and joy on her parents’ faces. It should not be something we should be forced to imagine’. We concur. Looking back at photos and video over the year we appreciate how much Erin loved dancing, singing and movement (view: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zy2dwdxkh399jkn/IMG_1376.MOV?dl=0). She surely was dancing at that performance, too, an unseen, silent guest demonstrating the same gay abandon and verve as she did in real life...
Erin’s friendship bench
In my second year of being in BC, I was Head of School at a school for gifted children. The school had a wonderful family atmosphere and teachers, students and parents were intimately connected in nurturing and educating these special children. We were invited to the school on the 16th April to attend a ceremony commemorating our sparkly daughter. The students sang, played musical instruments, talked about friendship and then unveiled a ‘Friendship Bench’. The bench is for students who are feeling lonely or left out and by sitting on it, the child indicates to his/her school-mates the need for friendship or reaching out from school mates. What an appropriate way to honour Erin who was always looking out for others’ needs and connecting to include others in her play!
These tributes to our daughter have been prolific; Erin has not disappeared in to the ether, a nomadic traveller in to an unknown land, but rather her spirit and her vibrancy have been translated into the world around us in so many remarkable ways. Many have commented how the natural world that claimed her conjure memories of our girl – through sunrises and sunsets, snowflakes, flowers, Spring. Her energy has translated into many different forms running parallel to those continuing the life from which she was prematurely removed. We are deeply moved by those that continue to stand by us and support us.
Erin’s live, love and laughter continue to live on in and will be remembered in ways that you and I will not be remembered. And that is profoundly comforting.