Today, June 23, would have been Pat Moss’s 73^rd birthday. I would always tease her that she was leading the way for me, born six months later. She’d laughingly give me tips on how to prepare myself for what was to come. The tips she might have now are likely beyond my hearing, but I’ll be keeping myself prepared today just in case a portal opens to transmit her wisdom.

Pat arrived in the Bulkley Valley a couple of years after Lynn and I did; she was there when our sons were born and became, as she did for many others, a chronicler of their childhood right up until she took photographs at our older son’s wedding in 2018. Shortly after that we left the valley, but she continued sharing pictures and keeping us connected to the several families we knew together over our many years as friends. And we brought with us many of the beautiful gifts she had given us, making our current house feel like home.

She spent most Christmas mornings with us all those years, and we’d marvel at the exotic gifts she received from her many equally well-travelled friends.

For those who didn’t know her, I’ve copied some of the eulogy Trish Farrow gave at her memorial in Glenwood Hall on March 15. Pat was a truly remarkable woman who created a place for herself in many lives and worked with us all to help preserve what’s best about our communities, locally, regionally, provincially and nationally. Her perennial bumper sticker read, Think Globally, Act Locally.

One of the places she created for herself was her unique home just over the hill from ours in Driftwood. Nestled amidst tall spruces (which occasionally blew over onto her house), her home was a sanctuary she cherished. Her big deck and several rooms looked out into the forest, gorgeous in winter’s snow, mysterious in the late night solstice light of June. When I came across a poem from William Stafford in Writing the Australian Crawl, I was pretty sure where, if you believe in such things, we’d find her.

Your breath has a little shape—
you can see it cold days. Well,
every day it is like that, even in summer.
Well, your breath goes, a whole a
army of little shapes. They are living
in the woods now and are your friends.
When you die—well, you go with
your last breath and find the others.
And in open places in the woods
all of you are together and happy.

Pat spent many Christmas mornings with us and books were among the gifts she regularly gave the boys. She was even brave enough to take the two of them to the Vancouver Children’s Festival, on her own. Note: the best photo of the three was taken by Pat, obviously!

Remembering Pat Moss

Pat was born in Montreal, her father’s work as a geologist taking her family to Labrador City and then Edmonton. Following graduation from high school, Pat travelled to Australia and began her lifelong love of travel. 

As a young adult living in Victoria in the 1970s, Pat took a job organizing grassroots opposition to the proposal for a Kitimat oil port. After the Kitimat Oil Port Inquiry led to the plan being shelved, Pat moved to Smithers and continued what became her life’s work defending our precious environment.

The late 1970s brought Alcan’s Kemano Completion Project, a proposal to dam the Nanika River and divert a substantial volume from the Bulkley watershed to supply the company’s Kemano power station. Pat was part of the group that eventually stopped work on the dam. She went on to work on many environmental campaigns over the next 40 years, including fish farms, the Sacred Headwaters, the Northern Gateway oil pipeline, and more. At the time of her passing, she was working with What Matters in Our Valley to protect the Bulkley River from the proposed Telkwa coal mine. Pat was a convener, relationship builder, organizer, and relentless advocate. 

In addition to her environmental endeavours, Pat was the Smithers librarian 1978-1994. Pat took the library from typewriters into the early digital age and was a talented librarian and leader for all of those years. She was also a strong proponent of intellectual freedom and set up the original policy for Challenges to Library Materials.

Pat believed in electoral politics and was a longtime volunteer with the NDP, both provincially and federally. In the 1990s,during a time of historic tensions over forestry, she played a key role in brokering a truce between the BC NDP’s union and environmental wings. She sat for many years on the provincial council and helped organize campaigns for candidates including Jim Fulton, Nathan Cullen, Doug Donaldson and Taylor Bachrach. 

Although she didn’t have children of her own, “Auntie Pat” played an important role in the lives of many local kids, The oldest children who remember their time at Pat’s house are now in their early 50s. The youngest is five.

Pat was also a consummate photographer, taking thousands of photos of her friends and sharing the prints and albums with them. She loved art and assembled an impressive collection of pieces by First Nations and other local artists. 

For her dedication to environmental causes, Pat received the Cal Woods Conservation Award; the Minister of Environment’s Individual Award; the Patagonia Fellowship; the Wild Earth Award; the Irving Fox Award (2014); and in 2025, the King Charles HI Coronation Medal in recognition of her life’s work.