Just 10 years ago at EDAM Dance performances at the Western Front I would take my older granddaughter Rebecca then 9 or so. A few years later we were accompanied by her younger sister Lauren.

Always there to greet us with her pleasant smile and low key voice was Debbie Blair who worked, my guess, as a volunteer for Peter Bingham’s troupe of contact improvisational dancers.

Somehow  Debbie Blair and I crossed paths many times and in many places. The first time was in the late 80s when I was shooting a brochure for the then Emily College of Art & Design. I was going to take some photographs of a life drawing class and Blair came up to me concerned on exactly how I was going to photograph her and the young man on the platform on the centre of the studio. I told her not to worry as I was going to photograph them from the rear. And this I did.

In the beginning of the 90s I was dispatched by the Georgia Straight to shoot on the town of Sointula on Malcolom Island North of Vancouver Island for a piece by Taras Grescoe. It was later published by the Guardian with my photographs.