Joan AndersenCourtesy of family
Joan Andersen: Cyclist. Journalist. Community activist. Loving partner. Born Aug. 26, 1949, in Nokomis, Sask.; died Nov. 9, 2022, in Vancouver, of medical assistance in dying; aged 73.
Joan grew up on her parents’ farm outside of Govan, Sask. It was there a seed was planted: a belief that positive change happens with community support. Nothing exemplified that more than harvest time when anyone slow getting their crop off would be helped by neighbours.
Typical of farm kids, while her father ran the combine, 10-year-old Joan, tall for her age, would help drive the Ford pickup so her mother could make dinner. She also started curling at the Govan rink, where her dad volunteered. While studying philosophy and music history at the University of Saskatchewan, she joined the university curling team. Three years later her team became the youngest to win the Canadian Ladies Curling Association Championship, a statistic that landed them in the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame.
In the early 1970s, Joan moved to Vancouver to earn a Master’s of Library Science at UBC. Here she made lifelong friendships with women who shared Joan’s interest in grassroots journalism. The “library girls” joined her at Co-Op Radio putting together programs based on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
In Vancouver, she also met journalist Allen Garr. They were both recently divorced. He had two daughters. She had no kids. He liked bluegrass. She preferred jazz and classical. But they both liked rock ’n’ roll and loved to dance. It was the beginning of a 48-year partnership.
Joan started at CBC Radio as a reporter and began a meteoric career rise that took her to Toronto, then Washington, D.C. Then she was sent to cover revolts in Eastern Europe and Central America. She returned to Toronto’s national newsroom and, finally, to Vancouver to run CBC Radio for the province.
Joan had no children of her own but was a favourite aunt. She often helped her sister Lorraine and her family and was a loving support for Allen’s kids and grandkids. Joan funded flights so family could visit her and Allen, and when her niece’s car broke down, it was the bank of Aunt Joan that came to the rescue.
Joan loved to volunteer, especially chairing the Vancouver Library Board and sitting on a city committee advocating for cycling. She was known to turn up at board meetings or at work in full cycling gear and it took a full-blown snowstorm for Joan to set her bike aside.
When radio producer Brooke Forbes died in 2006, Joan spearheaded a group to take on her friend’s work: helping BIPOC kids get into journalism. The Brooke Forbes Fund was born, and recently endowed to Carleton University’s School of Journalism.
After 35 years, Joan retired from CBC and worked for Mosaic, an organization serving immigrants and refugees.
Along the way Joan and Allen travelled, visiting almost every continent and pursuing their passion for bird-watching. Their other passion was 10 acres of land on Texada Island, across the Malaspina Strait from Powell River. Their Texada cabin was where Joan would go to decompress. “The trees,” she once said, “are my church.” The rock garden, where she spent endless hours, planting, pruning and weeding, with her portable radio tuned to CBC, was her pew in that church.
In 2020, Joan was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through two years of treatments and learned to play the ukulele. When that was too painful on her fingers she went back to the piano. Joan continued cycling until her balance began to falter as cancer reached her brain.
After hosting a birthday party for Allen in November, she chose medical assistance in dying.
In March, as was Joan’s wish, her ashes were spread on the Malaspina Strait. On the edge of Stanley Park’s Lost Lagoon a bench bears Joan’s name with a quote from John Lennon, her favourite Beatle: “A dream you dream alone is just a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”
Megan Tardif is Joan Andersen’s stepdaughter.
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