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MELANIE LITA CLARE
1955 - 2016

Melanie Clare was truly one of a kind. Born in Montreal to Joseph and Helen Clare but raised in Vancouver, she attended University Hill Elementary School, Vancouver Talmud Torah, and Eric Hamber Secondary before completing her B.Ed. at UBC, her M.Sc. in Education at the University of Oregon, and her VCC-ECE certification. In 1974, she met and fell in love with forester Jim Kellett; they were married in 1988 and blessed with the addition of two daughters, Islay (Abbotsford) and Jordana (Sydney, Australia), in 1989 and 1993. She also loved and took great interest in the lives of her almost son-in-law Ian Butler-Cole (Abbotsford), stepmother Anita Clare (Jacksonville), aunt Shirley Weiner (Haifa, Israel), cousins Bernie Newman (Milwaukee), Murray Newman (Toronto), David Newman (Toronto), David Weiner (Jerusalem), Rabbi Chaim Weiner (London, England), Nancy Oren (Haifa, Israel), Wendy McLean (Fredericton), Leah Gordon (Vancouver), Lynne Davis (Guelph) along with their spouses and families.

Melanie touched many lives, not only those of family and friends, but the many students she worked with and supported in over 30 years of teaching in Vancouver and Surrey as an Integration Support Teacher. After her declining health forced her to give up teaching, she took up writing from a desire “to describe the collision, the combustion, the confusions of life.” Reflecting on the course of her own life journey, she concluded, “My greatest accomplishments—in no particular order—are: our daughters, my Masters degree, having a job I loved & maybe making a difference in someone’s perception of themself and/or the world.” There was no “maybe” about it. Melanie’s instincts as a caring teacher continued to find expression even after she could no longer work, as she welcomed many teenagers into the Clare-Kellett home—sometimes on a live-in basis—often mentoring them through challenges both academic and personal. Her impact was so profound that many young people came to the hospital to be by her side in her final hours, joining other family and friends who surrounded her with love, laughter, and reminiscence.

Melanie’s creativity came through in her gifts not only as a writer but a seamstress, and she took great pleasure in designing and sewing cosplay costumes for her daughters and their friends. In her fifties, she acquired a love of tattoos, seeing them as both personal artistic expression and a symbol of freedom and control over her body. (It is no accident that her most spectacular tattoo, a beautiful arm-length riot of blue and purple morning glories, was designed by one of her young twenty-something friends.)

Melanie was an intellectual, an educator, a communicator and a facilitator. She disliked dishonesty, superficiality and intolerance. She could be prickly, abrupt and acerbic, with a wicked wit that erupted sometimes from deep wells of probing thought, sometimes an infectious delight in the absurd, or both at the same time. Having battled heart problems from birth, in 2012 she wrote, “my health has forced me to see my own ‘event horizon’ more clearly than I would have liked. All the same, I fully intend to go laughing rather than crying and if at all possible with a pitcher of martinis and a bar of 80% chocolate.” Friends and family discovered this passage in her writings the day before her death, and while Melanie could no longer partake of these indulgences herself, they arranged a martini-and-chocolate party around her bedside to be held the next day, Friday, January 8, at 12:30 p.m. Melanie was clearly aware of what was going on, and just after the party wound down on Friday afternoon, she peacefully slipped away. She’d once written, “My greatest joy is laughing. My strength is in putting people together and therefore events in motion.” And so she had, even in her final moments.

Melanie was a loyal, devoted, and much-loved wife, mother, cousin, and friend who will be deeply missed by all those who were lucky enough to get to know her.