Barry Kenneth Wright

Dear Family and Friends: Our dear Barry left this world on July 15th, 2021. Though his passing has left us feeling deeply saddened, we would like to remember his love for living life fully with family, friends and dogs. You can honour Barry on this site by sharing any words, images, photos, or memories that connect you to him. We've kicked things off with the obituary below. Please help fill out the portrait of his precious life. **Scroll down and you will see a box where you can leave a memory and/or upload a photo.** Thank you!

Obituary

“Blue skies!? Blue skies!?,” exclaimed Barry Kenneth Wright early one summer morning in 1989 while peering from his tent in the Rocky Mountains, much to the surprise of his sleeping family. After several overcast days Barry could not contain his excitement when the sun finally appeared. Incredulous, Barry loudly trumpeted the sun’s arrival for the benefit of the sleeping campers. Such was his zest for life. Like the many canine friends who were his constant companions, he was not one to wade carefully into the waters. Instead, as a matter of principle, Barry would charge, or, better yet, leap into the waters, no matter how cold. Barry’s life was fully lived and loved. And his passing has left a deep sadness in the hearts of those who loved him. Barry passed away on July 15, 2021 after a cruel battle with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD).

Barry was born on December 15, 1951 in Calgary, Alberta to Ethel Madeleine Wright, a nurse, and Herbert (Herbie) Earnest Wright, a CPR (Canadian Pacific Rail) employee. He was the last of their three children born seven years after his sister Joan and nine after his brother Ronald. Barry enjoyed a carefree childhood. He loved playing in his family’s unfinished backyard, making boats and castles in the mud.  He also had several pets including Charlie Brown, a Boston Terrier, and Snoopy his beloved dachshund. Such was his love for Snoopy that after an encounter with a porcupine in the Drumheller badlands, Barry plucked out the quills the porcupine had sprayed across Snoopy’s face.

By the mid-1960s, Barry grew into a handsome and towering teenager with long flowing locks of strawberry blond hair and a passion for Led Zeppelin. He was also good at math and card games. Yet at school, his disapproving teachers gave him an ultimatum — either cut your hair or don’t come back. Not one to be bullied, Barry took charge of his situation and left school. Much to the chagrin of his dear mother, he also left home to hitchhike across the Americas. After drifting for a few months, he returned home and began working as a laborer. With his savings he bought a motorcycle and continued roaming whenever he could. During his travels, Barry had a few near-fatal motorcycle accidents, spent a night in prison in the Dominican Republic for shoplifting a banana, was mistaken for Robert Plant and asked to front a rock band in Venezuela, and travelled to Colombia for the first of many times. He also developed boundless patience and a prodigious ability to withstand uncertainty and risk.

In 1971, at the age of 20, his life changed abruptly when his daughter Andrea was born to Carla Holroyd, the daughter of a Cree residential school survivor. In the following years, Barry was blessed with two more kids: Raphael born in 1974 and Gabriel born in 1975. After a few years, Barry took sole custody of the three kids. Around this time, he also trained as a carpenter to support his young family. Together, they continued wandering and crisscrossing the Rocky Mountains with stints in Calgary, Vancouver, Nanaimo, and Golden. At times, Barry could be seen riding a bicycle with the three kids aboard! During a longer stay in Golden, Barry managed to save some money and took advantage of low real estate prices to buy a house in Nanaimo. In Golden, Barry and his kids also welcomed a new member of the family who would be a fixture for the next decade and a half: Queen, their beloved German Shepherd.  

In 1985, Barry and his family moved to their new home on Vancouver Island. Here, Barry gained his high school equivalency and began taking classes at Malaspina College, while also volunteering at the crisis call center. Upon finishing his college diploma, Barry became determined to get his BA and uprooted the family once more to move to Simon Fraser University in Burnaby where they lived at Louis Riel House — a residence for students with families. When they moved to SFU in the summer of 1987, Barry was soon smitten by their downstairs’ neighbour — Pilar Riaño-Alcalá — who had come the year before from Bogotá, Colombia for a master’s degree and was a single parent to a cheeky six year old named Sebastián. After dating for a few years and merging their families, Pilar and Barry married in 1990. Through Pilar, Barry became part of an extended and diasporic Colombian family, the Riañitos and Alcalás, with members in Bogotá, Toronto, and Bern (Switzerland). A year after getting married, just before he turned 40, Barry graduated from SFU with a degree in English.

As he entered his 40s, Barry began a new and comparatively stable phase of his life and career. With the wealth of life experience and patience he had acquired, Barry decided to become an elementary school teacher. He began a bachelor of education at SFU though it turned out not to be a good fit. Not one to be deterred, Barry left the program and instead applied for and was accepted into UBC’s education school where he thrived and obtained his bachelor of education in 1994. Soon after, he began his first part-time teaching job at Grandview Elementary School in East Vancouver. After a fruitful year at Grandview, Barry became a full-time teacher at MacDonald (now Xpey’) Elementary school, a predominantly First Nations’ school in East Van, where he worked for the next decade and a half. Barry finished his teaching career at University Hill where he taught for several years before retiring.

During this phase of his life, he also developed a strong connection with wolves. When Queen passed away in 1997, Barry and his family fell in love with a wolf-dog puppy – a mix of grey and arctic wolf and husky and malamute –who they brought home and named Ketcheka (silent walker). A couple years later, after selling the house in Nanaimo, Barry and Pilar bought a house near Trout Lake in East Van, which they lovingly renovated and turned into a beautiful home with help from their friends and family. For the next two decades, Barry, Pilar, Ketcheka, Osito (Ketcheka’s wolfdog son), and later Chico (another wolfdog) became fixtures at Trout Lake’s dog park and Vancouver’s North Shore where they were often found tramping through the forest.

Barry will be remembered by his students, friends, and family for his tenacity, offbeat humor, generosity of spirit, and seemingly eternal youth. He was someone who learned primarily through trial and error and, accordingly, shared his crazy wisdom with others through adventure and mischief. He loved music and being outdoors and rarely missed the Vancouver Folk Festival. He was a loving husband to Pilar and did everything in his power to give his children, grandchildren, (and pets!) the best possible life. He also cared for many other people’s children and his students with the same degree of commitment. He supported his family and close friends through difficult times. During his mother’s last few years with dementia, Barry devoted himself to her care. He was also similarly present for his older brother Ron, whom he admired greatly, when he died from AIDS in the early 90s. He was a leader and advocate for the teaching profession, having served as his school’s union representative for many years. As a founding member of Greenpeace (1971), Barry was a committed environmentalist and made climate change and other environmental issues central to his teaching curriculum.

After retiring from teaching in 2017, Barry began to display erratic behavior that perplexed those around him. While he had always had an impeccable sense of direction he began to lose himself while driving. He was eventually diagnosed with the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia a condition that causes the frontal lobes of the brain to shrink and leads to dramatic changes in the patient’s behavior. Much to the profound sorrow of his family and friends, bvFTD advanced very rapidly for Barry. His last few months of life were filled with a form of suffering no one should have to endure but he was also blessed with the loving care of his three kids, his granddaughter Anna-Lee, his friends Clemencia and Alejandro, and Pilar. During his last few days he was calm, content, and seemingly at peace. He was also visited by his family members and by Chico, his beloved wolfdog. According to his nurses, Barry died in the morning after they bathed him. Upon hearing a nurse mention how much Barry had enjoyed Chico’s visit, Barry smiled and then leapt into the unknown.

Obituary written by: Sebastián Gil-Riaño