John Spencer
Remembering John
When John Spencer came on the VARCS board, some six years ago, he brought with him the interests of serving people living with HIV and their loved ones. He was a cross-board member from the Vancouver Island Persons Living with HIV/AIDS Society, but also saw VARCS as a way to reach not only people with HIV but also those who care for them.
His vision was one of compassion and caring - that all people living with HIV should be able to access the best medical care they chose, and that their family, partners and friends should get the support they needed as well.
It was very quickly that he started to see the larger political picture and wanted to participate even more fully. John started attending the Pacific Aids Network and spoke in his own quiet, but doggedly persistent way for the betterment of medical care, access to medications and more. In attending the Canadian Aids Society, he brought that same passion with him and focused not only on local issues, but regional and national issues as well. He truly understood the connections from Ottawa to the Province to the City.
But John was much more than that. The very thing that made him so passionate about the issues was the core of him. He loved. He laughed. He had a brilliant sparkle of life in his eyes, even though his own health was failing. He loved and he wanted others to experience love, and caring in a community that was built on belonging and care for one another.
I always think that when a person passes they take a little of us with them-that empty space that longs to see them again, that misses them: but they also leave something behind. The thing that John has left, for me, is that insistent passion to ensure that the work to make the community a better place is continued.
Sweet dreams John. You will be missed.
Michael Yoder
I first met John Spencer in the early 80's when we were both fairly new to Victoria. There was a small gay community centered mainly around the bar and a small impromptu café. Our paths crossed frequently.
By 1985 the news that the "mysterious gay disease" that had hit mainly New York City and San Francisco and was call AIDS was spreading to other centers including Vancouver and Toronto. It was thought to be an incurable disease of unknown origins but was "attributed" to gay men and their sexual activity. It put a fear in the gay community and provoked large scale misunderstanding and often homophobic reactions from the general community.
John had been partners with one of the first men in BC to be diagnosed. My close friend, Roy Salonin, shocked me one hot August afternoon by showing me his Kaposi Sarcoma scars which lead to his doctor diagnosing his AIDS "condition". John also knew Roy, as well as two other gay men, Wayne Cook, an RN and Grant Sullivan, a social worker. The five of us were individually angry at the lack of services, information and at the mis-education amongst the public. We decided something needed to be done in Victoria and John convened us to meet around his kitchen table in the house he shared with Claude on Begby Street. Weeks later, we had incorporated AIDS Vancouver Island and opened a help line which we manned nightly from each of our homes, thanks to call forwarding.
John was a very active volunteer member of our board and provided tons of important insight, thoughtfulness and leadership to our fledgling organization. We had lots of struggles, a few triumphs, and, thanks to John, who made sure we had fun along the way. Besides his caring and dedicated ways, he was one of the funniest guys I have ever had the privilege of knowing - and God knows, we needed a little bit of levity in our otherwise challenging mission of making a difference within the AIDS community and the broader public including the health care environment. John hosted a garage sale after we lost Roy, our first "founder" to die, with outrageous drag outfits, drawing lots of attention from the busy passerby traffic.
John himself was HIV+ and was a living example of determination and good spirit combining to overcome the odds and live a fairly long and extremely productive life. He spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours over the years providing leadership to AVI, the PWA's and VARCS, along with several regional and national agencies. He was also a true friend who's humor and good nature I will miss forever. He was one of my very special heroes.
Don MacIver, VARCS Board Member
LOVE
Caregivers give so much love each day of their lives in their caring for loved ones. Sometimes we feel this as all taken for granted. This is no easy task, this caring for others. Sometimes we do it willingly and sometimes grudgingly, no matter. "Love makes the world go around" that is what we are told. Not always easy to feel love when our lives are disrupted when we feel angry or frustrated, uncertainness and sadness at the way circumstances are for us, and for the world. However, in the depths of our souls we can rejoice, we ARE ALIVE! Stop and think a little about love; go back in time when you had your dreams and life was wonderful.
Young love is a flame hot and strong but still only a flickering flame. Older more disciplined live is deep, unquenchable. The first love we experience is love for a parent, that blind unquestioning faith our whole universe. As we grow, our horizons broaden - we revere and love our teachers and best friends; they become our world.
First romantic love is something that will always stay in our minds, a gift from the Gods, a joy forever, to look back on and cherish in quiet moments. A passion you felt could never diminish.
True love, when we are able to share our innermost thoughts, our very souls, with our loved one. It is the suffering element that measure love, we care for our love more than ourselves, selfless passion, joyous, noble, we reach the heights.
Love needs nurturing; like a garden we must feed and fertilize our love to make it grow strong.
Love strengthens and ennobles our characters, gives a higher motive and aim to our lives. Love makes us strong and courageous. The power to love truly, with devotion, is a gift.
Love gives, one cannot buy love
June Wilson, VARCS Board Member
