We Lost A Friend
Will Datene 1948 - 2018
It is difficult to lose a friend, but extremely painful to lose a very close friend! I am talking about our member Will Datene, who passed away last year while I was in Europe. I miss him very much. I can't recall how often I spontaneously touched base with him via Skype from the weirdest places on the globe, just to say hello, have a friendly chat or just to listen to his pleasant and unassuming voice.
How much I miss his friendly face and smile. Will and his wife Tricia enjoying seafood dinner. What a great couple!
Whenever I needed help working on CERCA's or my own website Will was there to help! And he always found a solution to a problem even if it took him hours of research. He did not give up easily. Will always was there when asked for volunteers, be it cutting broom along our nature trail, the swallow enhancement project, or taking groups out on guided tours.
Will was a real asset on our CERCA Board on which he served for several years. I fondly remember our Board meetings which always were a lot of fun and work, whether on our deck overlooking the Cowichan Estuary Will loved so much, or in my studio on Khenipsen road. Will designed our current website on which I jointly worked with him for a couple of months. He also took photos of all my art work for my personal website. We spent hours together discussing anything one can think of. Will was always there when we needed photos of events for our website. He designed posters for our Symposia and put together brochures of art work to be auctioned off at CERCA's fundraising dinners. He simply was always there when needed. We worked side by side for days clearing broom of CERCA's nature trail.
I fondly remember our outing with Will and his wife Tricia to the West Coast to introduce him to our favourate driftwood beach where we shared a picnic and a bottle of wine listening to the surf crashing in and the sea gulls calling.
Soon after we first met and learned how much we had in common we got together frequently.
Will was added to Beate's coffee list attached to our fridge reminding her of how Will likes his coffee...
Unfortunately I was out of the country for Will's celebration of life. I wish I could have attended and listened to the Eulogy given by Geoff Strong, another good friend of both of us and to all the others attending. Will was very much liked by the community and all who met him. I have asked Geoff's permission to publish his Eulogy to Will on our website.
Will, I, we miss you!
Eulogy to Will Datene - 19 January 2019 (by Dr. Geoff Strong)
Good afternoon, and thank you all for coming today, to remember and honour the life of Will Datené, to celebrate what he meant to us, and also to support Tricia in our prayers, as she struggles to move on. We especially welcome Will's brother, Ludwig, who travelled here from New York for this day.
Will passed away suddenly on November 5th, and it was a very great and sudden shock to everyone who knew him. He was planning to drive from Lake Cowichan to Botanical Beach just south of Port Renfrew to do some photography. He was due back home about 2 PM, and Tricia was used to Will being always on time. When he didn't show up at 2, she tried to reach him by phone and messaging for several hours, but the area he was in had poor cell service. She finally called the police around 7 PM to report him missing, and placed a notice on her Facebook page, which is where many of us noted his disappearance. An hour later, Trish got the news of his death from the RCMP.
=======================
So, what can we say about Will Datene?
For me, Will was a very unassuming character, not imposing, so that if you didn't take the time to speak to him, you might miss him in a crowd. But once you took the time to talk to him, he could capture your interest, for he was always personable, always willing to talk. And I'm missing him as a good friend, one who would never turn against you.
I knew Will only from the time we moved here to the valley, just a little over six years ago. I recall getting together one day between Christmas and New Year's, with Will and Bill Anderson, for the three of us liked to make and drink wine, and in our own ways we all liked to take photographs. We planned to take our cameras and hike up Mount Tzouhalem that day, for a light snowfall had created wonderful scenes. As we were walking and talking, I noticed a beautiful photo opportunity with sunlight streaming through the trees, so the three of us stopped and did our own thing for a few minutes. I thought I had gotten a glorious and beautiful photo, until I looked at Will's effort, which really put mine to shame, and I realized at that moment that I was not in his class at all. His photo was glorious and beautiful too, but also spectacular in a way that I can't quite explain, and I wish I had a copy of it. Bill has commented to me that Will was singularly the most inventive photographer that he ever met. He used his photography as a springboard for his imagination. He could take a pile of junk and make an artwork out of it with photography. Certainly, photography was one of Will's real gifts and strength. And he made a career out of it.
So let me briefly explain how that came about, and also how he and Tricia met.
=======================
Will was born in Aachen (aw-ken), Germany in 1948, just after the war, in a time of great upheaval in his town. Aachen is right at the border where the three countries of Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands meet, and it had been heavily bombed by the Allied forces. There were still unexploded bombs all over the city, so that the town remained in chaos three years after the war, and Will’s Dad was involved in the very dangerous job of bomb disposal. It was also a time of food shortages and great hardship.
Ten years later in 1958, Will was 10, his brother Ludwig, 15, and the family emigrated to New York City with the help of the Roman Catholic Church. This was another difficult period in Will’s life. He did not speak English at first, and being German, he was bullied in the Catholic school that he attended. He also suffered physical punishment from the teachers in the school. He was left-handed, but the nuns forced him to write with his right hand. He later went to a trade high school in a rough part of town where there was a lot of gang activity and violence. I expect that all of these hardships contributed to Will's character, but in a good way, for Will was a good man.
At 17, Will found an opportunity to apprentice with a commercial photographer in New York City. He learned his craft from the ground up from this very well-known photographer. However, this period of time, 1965, was in the middle of the Vietnam War, and he would soon be eligible for the military draft, despite being a German citizen. Will had seen enough of the ravages of war, and after turning 18, he became more anxious about the draft. His brother, Ludwig, urged him to leave the country. Will decided to move to Canada, and was able to get help from a group of people in Montreal who helped draft dodgers. I may have barely missed meeting him back then, for Phyllis and I lived in Montreal in the mid-60s, and I recall befriending several young men and American couples who had come to Canada to avoid the draft, and being anti-war myself, I was attracted to Americans at this time.
Will worked for some time for a photographer in Montreal, but French language and culture issues made life difficult again, so he moved to Toronto. There he met a friend who eventually encouraged Will to move to Vancouver with his first wife, Judy. In Vancouver, he worked for a motion picture film lab called Alpha Cine, and became a quality-control film processer for major motion pictures filming in BC.
In the early ‘70s, the “back to the land” movement attracted Will and Judy and another couple to purchase and split 160 acres of land near Terrace, BC. Will and Judy built a small cabin and planned to build a larger house later, but unfortunately their marriage did not survive and they parted in the mid-1970s.
By 1979, Will started to feel lonely and came south for the winter to Vancouver again. There he met and eventually married Tricia. They were together just short of 40 years when he died. Tricia tried to talk him into moving to Victoria, but instead, he convinced her to quit her government job and move back north. That first year they lived in the small cabin, and slowly built a log house that they would live in for eight years. They lived off-grid, and didn’t have running water for two years until Will put in a gravity-feed water system. They used propane and kerosene for light, cooking and the fridge. Tricia learned how to can food, and even butchered meat when Will happened to kill a bear. During this time, Will worked as Forestry Assistant with the Ministry of Forests. His favourite part of the job was working on the fire lookout towers in the summer, which provided great opportunities to photograph sceneries, while Tricia could visit by hitching a ride on the supply helicopter.
In 1987, after being laid off from his government job, Will decided to return to commercial photography, so they moved back to Vancouver where he had a studio in Gastown. He started selling his images through stock photography.
A few years later, Tricia followed the job market that took them to Kamloops, and later back to the island in 2008. Will was able to adapt his work to the changes in location and technology, by becoming proficient in image manipulation software and web page design. Once he discovered Photoshop software, he was right in his element. His combined love of the outdoors, photography, and his computer, made for him the perfect career. Several years ago while I was volunteering with the Cowichan Estuary Restoration and Conservation Association, CERCA gave Will a small contract to develop our web site. He used some of his own photography, and included a beautiful sound track of gulls in the background. It was one of those special touches that Will gave to things, and when you have time, go to the CERCA web site and see and hear some of Will's work. Will joined the CERCA board, and met Jock and Carmen, who have an art gallery in Maple Bay. The combination of their art of painting and sculpture, and Will's art of photography made them instant good friends, and they combined efforts in a number of successful art events.
We shall all miss Will greatly, no one of course as much as Tricia, but Tricia's strong faith and her loving friends will carry her through as Will would want. And Will, his photography could even make photos of heaven look more heavenly.