Mark Allan
Record Staff
The Comox Valley lost an ardent conservationist when Hope Spencer died last week.
Barbara Price lost a dear friend whom she said Monday had “an incredible, indomitable spirit.”
Price met Spencer more than 20 years when Spencer was trying to protect Eleanor Dunsmuir’s estate at the top of Comox Hill where the Emerald Shores development is now.
“There was a heritage home, old growth (trees) and the last undisturbed remnants of the First Nations village,” Price recalled Monday. “We worked together on that and became firm friends.”
Spencer, who died at St. Joseph’s Hospital of congestive heart failure at 91, was well-known in the community, Price noted.
“She would always be out with her basket of apples and pears delivering them to all the shops and credit unions and her Hope’s Heavenly Happle Juice that she made from it.”
Spencer’s parents came to the Comox Valley in the late 1940s. Her father was an Alberta MP representing the CCF, an NDP forerunner.
“He was a founder of the Unitarians in the Comox Valley and Hope went on to be a great supporter of the Unitarians here.”
Price said her friend was brought up to be very independent and free-thinking. Her mother would take Spencer and her two siblings to visit Ottawa when Parliament was sitting.
“I remember Hope saying that when she was 13, her mother sending her out to find an apartment to rent and she was trusted to look at an apartment and take it on.”
Spencer, like Price, was an activist for causes she held dear.
“You would always see her letters to the press – ‘I’ll be there with my oxygen and walker,’ for the growth strategy, urging people to get out and fight the settlement expansion areas (part of the Regional Growth Strategy).
“Right up to her death, just short of 92, she was still very much involved in the community.”
Spencer archived all her family papers and wanted them left to the museum (Comox Museum and Archives),” said Price, the executor of Spencer’s estate.
Leaving her public health career about 30 years ago, Spencer retired to her family’s estate, a five-acre sheep farm where the Comox United Church now stands.
The barn, more than 100 years old, still stands, said Price. Spencer kept bees and maintained an orchard, but never married.
Price said her dear friend was much more than a beekeeper, farmer or orchardist.
“She was an incredibly well-educated woman, with two masters degrees. A large part of her life, she was a public health worker.
“She worked extensively in the North with the Inuit and several years in Nepal, so she was incredibly well-travelled.”
Spencer’s door was always open, Price said, even in the last stages of her life.
“Anybody could call in on her any time. She was always someone people could turn to if they needed someone to talk to.”
An accident three years ago put Spencer on oxygen and “no longer driving around and shooting off to conferences, which she was doing well into her 80s.”
When the end came, Price was there for her friend.
“The nurses were absolutely fabulous. My hat’s off to St. Joe’s – even though the hospital is packed to the gills, they found a quiet place where she could die in dignity and in peace. She died very quietly and peacefully, and slipped away.”
• • •
A celebration of life happens this Saturday at 2 p.m. at Comox United Church.
editor@comoxvalleyrecord.com