Juan Sebastian Gil-Riano

Barry Wright

Pilar Riaño-Alcala

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

Page Settings

Enter location name

Full Name

We use cookies to improve your browsing experience and analyze site traffic.
<privacyLink>Privacy Policy</privacyLink>.

<firstParagraph>We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze how you use this website, store your preferences, and provide the content and advertisements that are relevant to you. These cookies will only be stored in your browser with your prior consent.</firstParagraph><secondParagraph>You can choose to enable or disable some or all of these cookies but disabling some of them may affect your browsing experience.</secondParagraph>

<firstParagraph>We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.</firstParagraph><secondParagraph>The cookies that are categorized as 'Necessary' are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site.</secondParagraph>

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

Analytics

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

Functional

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

Necessary

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

Performance

Customize Cookie Preferences

Black Friday Offering

Honor Their Memory

- Including QR Memorial Plaques, Memorial Trees and our Keeper Plus and Concierge Memorial Plans

Now offering KeeperQR Plaques

New Message

The following files could not be uploaded

Ways you can honor {memorialName}'s memory:

Donation Link

Upcoming Event

Featured Mementos

Title

A message title is required. Please update.

Welcome Message

Select an item to highlight

Add a highlighted item

Customize which items you’d like to highlight on the memorial

Create Account

Become a Keeper

As a free {brandName} user, you will only be able to make 5 photos and videos public.

As a free {brandName} user, only the first five (5) Mementos are visible to page visitors. You can change which Mementos are public by dragging and dropping a photo or video to one of the first five positions. Upgrading to {brandName} Plus will make all 10 Mementos selected visible to the public.

All Mementos

This option is only available to Keeper Plus users.

To allow yourself and the rest of the community to view all images and videos, and to enable everyone to download their own copy of these mementos, upgrade your account to Keeper Plus.

This memento is not visible to visitors

Your community has posted {itemCount} more pictures and videos that honor {firstName}'s memory. To view them all, and to enable everyone to download their own copy of each, this account will need to upgrade to Keeper Plus.

View all images and videos with Keeper Plus

Our Obituary Assistant helps you craft a meaningful life story in minutes. Review and edit every detail, and unlock more features with Keeper Plus.

Obituary Assistant

Spend as much time as you need working on your Memorial page before it is visible to the public, and much more, when you upgrade to Keeper Plus.

Save Page as Draft

Create unlimited event pages and unlock a suite of powerful features to help you seamlessly coordinate event details, invites, and more when you upgrade to Keeper Plus.

Event

Create a full picture of your loved one’s community and add unlimited family and friends to Loved Ones when you upgrade to Keeper Plus.

Loved One

Create unlimited Memorials — and unlock unlimited images and videos, event pages, and advanced privacy settings — to help you keep memories alive when you upgrade to Keeper Plus.

Memorial Page

Add unlimited Stories to highlight the all the things that made your loved one unique, from milestones, images, albums, documents, locations, and much more.

Highlight Stories

Upgrading to Keeper Plus means you can add additional Keepers to help you gather Mementos and tributes, approve content, build out a family tree, and tell {firstName}' story on Keeper.

Invite Keepers with Keeper Plus

Upload and display unlimited photos and videos, use unlimited Story templates to highlight key moments, and allow friends and family to download their own copies when you upgrade to Keeper Plus. 

Better Mementos with Keeper Plus

To access memorial related configurations that control the display of the banner upgrade to Keeper Plus.

This configuration  is not available on your current plan

Create a meaningful link path to add a personal touch to {firstName}'s memorial.

Custom Memorial link

Gift Messages

SENDING AS A GIFT?

Cart

MEMORIAL TREE PLANTED

BEES PROTECTED

PLASTIC RECYCLED

CLEAN WATER

This will permanently delete your account. The business account, and business page will not be deleted. To deactivate your account, there must be another admin user assigned to your organization.

Are you sure you want to deactivate this account?

Organization name

Your name

To permanently remove this item, select Remove. To keep this item, select Cancel.

You have selected to delete {count} items from the Mementos Library. In doing so, these items will be permanently deleted from your library.  Do you wish to continue?

Thank you for your submission. All submissions are reviewed and must be approved before they appear on the page.

Thank you for you submission.

Web URL

Create a full picture of your community by creating individual Memorial pages for your family members, friends, and more.

Highlight the important people in {name}'s life by adding them as a Loved One. You can add someone via their {brandName} Memorial or Living Memorial page, or add their information manually.

Enter this Loved One’s email to let them know you have added them.

Add Loved One

You can only add an image for your Loved one by upgrading to Keeper Plus or creating a Memorial page for a Loved One that has passed away.

This is where the descripton will appear.

Add up to 50 photos and/or videos to create an album of a specific moment in {firstName}’s life. You’ll be able to reorder files and add captions to each file after you save.

Enter an album title

This is the album title

How would you name this album?

Album title

Enter album title

Group title (optional)

Used to mention your loved one throughout the memorial.

To avoid losing the previously generated text, we recommend copying and pasting the text to a secure location. If you wish to save the text, close this window, and copy the text to a secure location. If you are ready to generate a new version of your text, select the ‘Generate Story’ button.

Your current text will be removed

With just a few details from you, our AI-powered writing tool can draft a personalized and meaningful life story in a click.

The Obituary Assistant will take all the content you add to craft the perfect obituary. For the best possible results, please make sure all sections are completely filled out before generating.

Not displayed - used for your notifications only.

Used to display your relationship to {firstName}

Name

Who is this memorial for?

Use our Story templates to highlight a memory or event by adding unique details and a special layout.

New Offering

Create a video slideshow in minutes

Introducing Tribute Videos

Transform your profile page into a Living Memorial to start preserving your own legacy with photos, videos, and more. You can choose to keep your Living Memorial hidden until you’re ready to publish. Have more questions?

Create a Document Story

Enter a document title

Edit a Document Story

Upload an important document that signifies a moment in {firstName}’s life. This will display on your Memorial, so please don’t upload a death certificate, Social Security card, or anything containing sensitive information.

Document Story

What does this document represent?

We're getting your Mementos ready for download in a secure .zip folder, but it may take some time depending on your internet speed and file sizes. You'll need to stay on the site while this happens, so please don't leave mykeeper.com! (You're welcome to navigate away from this page and do other things on the site, as long as it's on mykeeper.com.)

We're getting your Mementos ready for download in a secure .zip folder, but it may take some time depending on your internet speed and file sizes. You'll need to stay on the site while this happens, so please don't leave our website.

Preparing your download

Change the name of this album in the field below

Edit the album title

You are creating and/or updating an event in the past.  If this was done in error, cancel and review your changes. 

Event is in the Past

Create an event page to coordinate a gathering in honor of {username}

To permanently remove this event and all corresponding data, select Delete. This cannot be undone.

Do you want to remove this event?

Share a link for guests to access a Virtual or Live Streamed Event

Share the event location to provide guests with directions

Choose if anyone on the internet can see event settings and RSVP options.

Only those with this password can access the event

Event privacy

Event RSVP

Choose if anyone on the internet can see who has RSVP'd to the event.

Guestlist privacy

Describe the event, including dress code, requests, or other important details

Enter important personal and family events like the birth of a child, a marriage, and more.

Select the <star>star icon</star> on a photo or video to display it in the Featured Mementos Section on the Memorial page. You can feature between 3 and 10 items.

Why are you flagging this?

By clicking subscribe below, you will receive emails containing information on any updates or additions that are made to this memorial page.

By clicking unsubscribe below, you will no longer receive emails containing information on any updates or additions that are made to this memorial page.

By clicking subscribe below, you will receive email reminders for upcoming events containing the event details - 72hrs prior to the event occurring for {username}’s Memorial.

By clicking unsubscribe below, you will no longer receive email reminders for upcoming events containing the event details - 72hrs prior to the event occurring for {username}’s Memorial.

By clicking subscribe below, you will receive emails containing information on the most recent memorials added to {brandName}.

By clicking unsubscribe below, you will no longer receive emails containing information on the most recent memorials added to {brandName}.

Welcome back, {name}

Welcome to {name}

Add a special touch to a memorial by including a beautiful emblem.

Story Title

What would you like to call this storyline?

Need examples? Try "{firstName}'s Life at University" or "A Lifelong Learner."

Add Interests or Milestones

Tell us about {name}'s life

Highlight the important people in {firstName}’s life by adding family members, friends, and more as Loved Ones. To get started, simply add existing {brandName} users and Memorial pages as Loved Ones, or add them manually by entering some basic information.

Section title

Add a map

Add markers to significant places, landmarks, cities, and other locations to create a personalized map that tells part of {firstName}’s life story.

Add a Map Story

What would you like to call this map?

Map Story

Enter a map title

Need ideas? Try something like “Places {firstName} Called Home” or “Favorite Vacation Spots”

Add a memento story

Add up to 100 photos and videos at once to your Memorial. You'll be able to add details, or feature as Stories later, if you like.

Add Mementos

Add Title or Text Story

Mementos are uploaded photos and videos that other users can like and comment on. If you'd like to highlight one of these and tell its story, you can transform them into Stories.

Updating your biography

A consolidated view of all the ways someone can honor the memory of your loved one (send flowers, donations, etc.).

Banner

This option allows users to customize the visual appearance of the memorial page by removing the existing Keeper logo from the memorial page. This is particularly useful for those who prefer a more personalized look for the page.

Remove Keeper Logo

Memorial Page Configurations

Allows visitors to the memorial page to purchase a tree in honor of your loved one’s memory.

Purchase a Tree

Allows you to show or hide the “Send Gift Basket” button in the memorial page banner, letting you choose how others can honor your loved one’s memory

Send Gift Basket

Allows visitors to the memorial page to send flowers or make donations in honor of your loved one’s memory.

Send Flowers

Sympathy Gifts

This option allows admin/editors the ability to customize the visual appearance of the memorial page by showing or hiding the display of  “Sympathy Gift Ideas” on the memorial page. This is particularly useful in assisting families who prefer a more personalized look for the page.

Memorial Configurations

Only you can see this page and all its content.

Replace the current background with one that feels right for the memorial.

We couldn’t use this photo. Try a different one.

Memorial Settings

Enhance portrait

Memorial Keepers

This page and all its content is now visible according to your privacy settings.

If added as a Keeper, you'll be able to manage and edit {keeped}’s profile

Request Keeper Access

Send a message to {name}

Check your inbox

The information you have entered will be lost if you close this window.

Are you sure you want to close this window?

Select ‘Submit Obituary’ to complete and publish this obituary, or select ‘Keep Editing’ to include additional information in the obituary.

Barry Kenneth Wright

Tell us about Barry Wright's life

Add Mementos

Tell us about Barry Wright's life

Add Mementos