Text of my contribution to today's eulogy:
I’m honoured and humbled to have been invited to share a few words about Sarah’s work. I am one of the many, many people who have been fortunate enough to have been trained by, and work with both Sarah and Nikki.
Many of us have worked with Sarah to map, conserve and restore coastal ecosystems. What did that mean for Sarah? I feel like I only know a fraction. What I do know is that it ranged from office management to gear management to boat skippering to SCUBA diving, to teaching youth about the connections between land and sea while paddling canoes, to divvying up budgets, to operating a crane to pull garbage out of the ocean and a pump to pull waste out of boats, to training young people in a range of skills to launch their careers, to quietly preparing a hot meal for a tired field crew (and clean up afterwards without complaining), and to concisely articulating what is wrong with the system and what needs to be done to fix it. Basically, Sarah could do anything. And teach, support and inspire others to do it as well.
I have a story from one time when we were mapping eelgrass on one of the Gulf Islands. I met Sarah there, after she had trailered the boat across. She said, "I may not have brought the key." To the boat. To turn it on. To do our work for the week. I said – okay…. Sarah taught me how to drive a boat, but I didn’t know much about boats. She looked at the ignition, told me that there’s a number, we had to get that number key from a marine supply store, we looked in a book, found a store, went across to the big island to the store, got the key, went back across, and were on the water mapping by mid afternoon…
To begin to describe the depth of what her work has meant for so many of us, I’ve merged excerpts of words shared with Sarah recently by several members of the extended SeaChange family, in a letter we called “A few of our favourite things about Sarah”:
• You are an amazing teacher.
• Your patience! Your attention to detail. Your optimism. Your leadership from behind.
• We could talk for hours
• The late night conversations during field work trips
• You are able to easily make conversation with everyone you meet.
• You emanate acceptance and curiosity with people who may not share your values.
• Your big picture thinking.
• Someone who takes seriously the dreams of other people. The way you ask questions (and listen!) makes people take their own ideas more seriously.
• You offer such immense and grounded care that makes others feel heard, supported, and empowered.
• Your drive to challenge the status quo while maintaining a kind and respectful presence. You have influenced so many of us to step up for change.
• Your creativity and ingenuity
• Someone who makes things happen …who will add acid to a bucket of screws to strip off rust, who will do the work to understand the problem and then cobble together a solution with whatever is under the seat of your truck.
• You are such a resourceful person who can fix anything from computers to field equipment.
• Your dedication and passion to restore and protect marine ecosystems.
• Your no-nonsense approach, which you mix with humour to keep us all sane in a world that sometimes doesn’t make sense
• You accomplished rather than talked about what was wrong.
• A goddess on the seas - moving important work forward and taking everyone with you.
• The embodiment of the hard work, creativity and resourcefulness that can turn dreams into reality, can make community out of strangers and family out of friends.
Sarah’s departure leaves a big hole, but she’s continuing to teach and inspire us in this surreal world:
- even through grief – to remember the power of positivity, and
- even through distance – to hold each other as tightly as we can.
And of course to never put a single tea bag in more than one cup of hot water, because that’s just not right. Thank you Sarah, and thank you Nikki for all that you have done and that you continue to do.
