She’s gone. She lived well. We’ll miss her.

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We’ve known her since 2005, when she was a co-conspirator on the wonderful little local Northern Voice blogging conference. We worked on other stuff together and hung out now and then and carpooled to the Prairies once and I can’t remember ever getting the slightest bit upset with her.

Ally (rhymes with “valley”) was a fine dog-parent and a strong grant-writer and a first-rate teacher and a connoisseur of fine cooking equipment and Canadian football. If you’ve been to much in the way of Vancouver theatre and dance events over the years, there’s a good chance that she produced the event or secured its funding or educated the people who did those things.

I remember having coffee with her a couple years ago, she advising me on one of my projects, laughing together at the Byzantine complexities of granting bureaucracies and the childlike money-obliviousness of arts leaders and the excellence of the coffee on that morning. Easy to be with.

Mesothelioma is a bitch; 8% 5-year survival rate, and there wasn’t that much they could do for her by the time they got the diagnosis right. We visited her last week and she was herself, cynical about her situation but it seemed more or less at peace.

I won’t miss her as much as the dogs will, but there’s still a gap in my life.