KEN AND HELEN’S PRINCE RUPERT

Prince Rupert rainbow

Helen (Green/Phelps) Harding was born in Prince Rupert and lived here all her life. Even when her husband Ken retired after 40 inspiring years as manager of the PR Fishermen’s Co-op and considered moving elsewhere, Helen refused to leave this place. Both Ken and Helen were deeply committed to community life in Prince Rupert, and gave much of themselves to make it what it is.

On August 4 we spread their ashes in Crippen Cove, in the little sand and gravel beach bay where Helen’s grandfather, Reg Green came in 1907 to start a herring saltery. 100 years later Helen’s daughters Anne and Susan and son Thomas and spouses, and granddaughter Jo-Lynda gathered on the beach to say good-bye.

We shared stories and loving remembrances. It was emotionally harder than anyone had expected; time has passed since Ken died in 2003 and Helen in 04. But somehow the bay is richer, something has been added to the striking beauty of the point of land that stretches from rainforest into busy Metlakatla Pass. Their spirits are present; the love they shared in all kinds of ways during their lives blesses us all.

From when I first came to Prince Rupert in 1999, Ken and Helen have been for me the heart of a vital and genuine coastal community. The city is shaped by the diversity in this natural crossroads. There are the original Tsimpsian people, the traditional Scandinavian fishing community, and people from all over the globe drawn to the north Pacific. And now the Vietnamese crab fishing folks.

Here where the land meets the sea, human and animal clans intersect, and human enterprise is not so full of itself. Ken and Helen and their neighbours put up with the deer in their backyards because they understand they share space with all kinds of creatures.

Prince Rupert is a community-sized city. There seem to be a significant set of people who care primarily about the well being of the whole community. People have time for each other. When our friend Gordy was seriously injured in a fall from a ladder while painting his house, we thought he wouldn’t be able to look after himself. But whenever we go to check in on him, there’s a steady stream of neighbours: dropping in, bringing food, walking Kimbo, running errands. The word was all over town before he got out of emergency.

Here are Gordy and Kimbo as they will be again in a couple of months.

Our first summers of sailing on La Sonrisa, Ken Harding always met us at the dock in the old Subaru. Now the tradition is upheld by Gordy and Foster - with Foster's wife Hilda, the last of Ken and Helen’s bridge-playing set.

One of my cherished memories of Ken and Helen was sitting between them in their pew near the front of First United Church. It was like going back into Thomas’ childhood, sandwiched into love passed from generation to generation. Since their death their church has become our northern church family, where we feel especially close to them. It has long been one of those very alive church communities, where people aren’t afraid to share their gifts and get involved; and they make a difference in the larger community. At announcement time we told about spreading Ken and Helen’s ashes. Jean was inviting people to take part in making new wall hangings, and told us about the ones hanging all around us this Sunday. They were made years ago, when she asked every person in the congregation to make a square. Now she tells us the money for the material came, quietly, from Helen. That was her way, she would slip money from her piano teaching fund to this person and another.

One of the quilted hangings we saw in the sanctuary

People from First United came for a picnic at Crippen Cove. Ken and Helen were very close!

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