Joan Dame, 79
Mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, friend, ballroom dancer, voracious reader, role model. Born April 9, 1932, in Markinch, Sask. Died July 24, 2011, in Edmonton of cancer, aged 79.
Joan Dame lived her life by her favourite quote, Robert Browning's, "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"
She spent her childhood years in Markinch, Sask., one of three children of Clara and Ferdinand Kriekle. Joan was valedictorian at Sacred Heart Academy in Regina, then attended the University of Saskatchewan. In 1953, she moved to Edmonton and was hired by Shell Oil Co.
While working for Shell, she noticed a handsome man struggling to open the front office door. He was carrying a bundle of maps pointing in all directions. "What a nut," she thought, "to carry maps in such a way."
Joan was a beauty in a 1930s movie star kind of way. She played the piano and studied singing, read Shakespeare and Dickens. It wasn't long before she caught the eye of the map-carrying A.A. (Andy) Dame, a geophysicist with Shell. On their first date, Andy and Joan went dancing, and within three months they were husband and wife. When Joan was later asked, "Why did you get married after such a short engagement?" she would answer, "Because he was a wonderful dancer."
Joan and Andy had five children and lived in such varied places as Peace River, Alta., Houston and Lagos, Nigeria. In 1972, Joan left Lagos with her children, now ranging in age from 3 to 13, and settled once again in Edmonton.
For the next 15 years she raised her children as a single mother, shuttling them to and from piano, dance, violin and swimming lessons, while at the same time completing an arts degree at the University of Alberta. Joan valued education over virtually all else. She chose not to indulge her children with material possessions but rather to raise them so they would have the means to achieve such things on their own, should they choose.
In the spirit of Walt Whitman, whom she admired and fervently read, Joan made certain that her children knew to re-evaluate all they had "been told at school or church or in any book," and to "dismiss whatever insults your soul."
When her youngest child was 12, Joan built an addition onto her home and moved her mother and father to Edmonton to live with her. She took care of them until their deaths.
Joan returned to work in 1982, and was employed as a postal liaison at the Edmonton Examiner for nearly two decades. She also volunteered for the Canadian Cancer Society.
These days, kindness seems underrated in favour of qualities such as courage, intelligence and beauty. Joan had all those qualities in spades. But, above all, she was kind. And it is for her kindness that she is most remembered.
By Marie Dame, Joan's daughter.