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Val Ross interviewed Alice Munro at length on at least two occasions.

"She was a bright soul and this is a cruel loss. She was so interested that doing an interview with her was always more than a pleasure, it was an exploratory journey."

The Writers' Union of Canada

The Writers' Union of Canada on Friday posthumously honoured Val Ross with a lifetime honorary membership "for her commitment to reporting on the arts which she understodd were vital to democracy," said WUC chair and author Susan Swan. "Val represented journalism's highest potential in everything she wrote. We at the union are sad to lose her and are sorry we didn't get the chance to confer this honour before she died."

Katherine Ashenburg is the author of The Mourner's Dance: What We Do When People Die and The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History. She was the editor of The Globe and Mail's arts section from 1989 to 1996.

Val brought a steno pad to the weekly planning meeting of the arts department, as did most of the writers. But, in addition to assignments and dates to remember, Val peopled her notebook with ironic sketches of the artists under discussion, her colleagues and, sometimes, herself. (For a beautiful woman, she seemed unencumbered by vanity. When she drew herself, she invariably added about 30 pounds and at least one extra chin. For a long time, she kept a comical and highly unflattering picture of herself pinned up on her cubicle wall; it showed her interviewing publisher Anna Porter, for some reason on her knees.)

Val masked her serious dedication to the arts in Canada with a light, wry touch. She loved to mock the hoary nationalist cliché that we needed Canadian artists "to tell our own stories," although, of course, she believed that too. But she knew that earnest articles about worthy Canadian writers were not the way to attract readers. Sharply observed and irresistibly readable portraits in words were a better strategy. One of Val's favourite words was "nimble." She herself was supremely nimble, from her steel trap of a mind to her masterful reporting and feature articles to those deft sketches she created during our Monday meetings.

Vera Frenkel is an internationally recognized mixed-media artist and arts activist from Toronto whose honours, among others, include the 1999 Bell Canada Award for outstanding achievement in video art and a 2006 Governor-General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.

Val Ross, mentor and fellow conspirator, had a gift for seeing and encouraging the best in people. In her presence, a recognizably off-kilter world was nevertheless, somehow, perceived as reparable, or at least worthy of the attempt.

A shared concern for the threatened erosion of Canadian visual identity deepened our bond as we watched support for the arts being drained away. We were perturbed, when, among other losses, the building of the Portrait Gallery of Canada was halted, and later as this important source of pride and national vision was bandied about as a political pawn.

The Feb. 7 colloquium on the future of the Portrait Gallery of Canada that Val, along with Vincent Del Buono, organized at Massey College in Toronto took place during the worst snowstorm this winter, and it was possible that no one would be able to attend. When I spoke to Val that morning — this, just days before her death — she was still at home, her street a steep, icy challenge, and she was worried about getting there herself. A greater concern, she said, more worried about others, was that people might be upset at seeing her in a wheelchair.

Despite the winter mess, every contributor arrived in due course at the long table at Massey College. Val was there, too. Yes, she did arrive in a wheelchair with Morton Ritts, her husband, escorting her, and took her place at the head of the table. Though not able to stay long, what Val said to us was luminous, courageous and heartening. By the end of that snowbound day, the Friends of the Portrait Gallery was born, part of Val's legacy as eloquent witness to the ways in which the arts shape Canadian consciousness. Once the Portrait Gallery is built, they should name a gallery of most-cherished Canadians after her.

Matthew Teitelbaum is CEO of the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Val Ross was special to so many of us for her intelligence, her curiosity, her compassion and her exemplary professionalism. She brought the joy of living to her writing, the skip and the jump of the pleasures of learning which she communicated so effortlessly to her readers. Val never looked for the seamy underside of things, but the optimistic motivation that made creative people do creative things. She was never cynical, always empathetic.

This doesn't mean she was a pushover, or that she wasn't discerning. She knew what phony was. It's just that in everything she did, she wanted to celebrate her journey of discovery. The journey was the thing. And when you got hitched to her train, on that journey, everything seemed possible. That's why she was so important to the toilers in the world of art and literature, because she made us all think of how things could be better, and urged us to make it happen. Val combined insight and empathy with humour.

She had a wonderful way with words. When she wrote to me to tell me of her illness, she talked of taking time off to do her renovation, as we were taking time off to do ours. She said, in that wonderful way, she was a part of us. I will have a sad moment when we open our doors [in fall 2008], remembering that Val won't be able to share the pleasures. She could imagine them, though. And that will be some comfort.

John McAvity is executive director of the Canadian Museums Association.

She was a creative rascal, the sort you simply want to count as a friend. Creative, outspoken, lateral, caring and ever so endearing. She understood context, which includes our history, our creativity and concerns over where our country is leading. For this, she received the Canadian Museums Association's rarely given award for journalism in the spring of 2007.

For the last 12 or so years, Val and I never called each other by our first names, but rather by a raft of other names, all in good fun — it was our little standing joke, and a jokester she was. Looking at her photo in The Globe and Mail's obituary section, I could see that rascal in her, which must have been in full force as a young girl, in swinging London, and at editorial meetings throughout her career.

One of her most common lines to me, was "No kidding," which she added to most messages when she got serious, which thankfully was not too often.

Val knew that museums and galleries were not boring and irrelevant to Canadians, but she had to fight internally to get these stories out. "I can do lurid if that is what they want" she confessed to me — after all, she had written for Playboy, even Miss Chatelaine.

She cared about the serious big-picture stories of this country that rarely get reported. The private world of profit gets dozens of pages daily in all major papers. Val Ross was the champion of the issues that others felt were unimportant. If it had not been for her determination and her insights, the bizarre but true story of the Portrait Gallery of Canada, the demise of the national delivery service of exhibitions, and of various governments broken cultural promises, would never have been brought to the public eye.

Val was also an optimist, in all of her writings. Even as her brain tumour spread, she would say, "I am fine and I will be back to work soon."

In one of her last notes to me, she wrote, "Sooner or later we are all history, and I take great COMFORT in history."

Next e-mail said simply, "Hasta la vista."

We have lost a great and uncommon soul and voice, and a damn fine reporter who leaned toward what others overlooked or thought was irrelevant. History will prove her right.