In Vancouver, a city with a poor memory for what came before, I try to use my blog as a place to keep my memories alive and perhaps even jar others into realizing this tragedy.

It was on December 31^st 2015 that bandleader, clarinettist and saxophonist Dal Richards died at age 97. Until his last breath, except for being a little hard at hearing this lively and cheerful man was a delight to talk to and particularly to sit next to him at a theatre opening or concert. It was in a couple of them that he happened to meet my youngest daughter Lauren (now 15).

Who knows if my stories on how Richards’s first instrument was the clarinet may have persuaded Lauren to pick the clarinet as her instrument of choice in her high school band. We have gone to many of these concerts and she does very well with the instrument which is not an easy one to play.

I learned to play the alto saxophone for my school band and I noticed when I tried to play a clarinet that if one wasn’t careful several notes would come out of the clarinet if you did not blow as required.

Richards on any time that I might run into him would invariably tell me that the picture that I took of him was the best ever.

Dallas Murray Richards, 97, Lauren Elizabeth Stewart, 12, April 11, 2015

It is a pleasure to gang up these two pictures. I photographed Lauren on January 6, 2017. We tried to make the picture be in the spirit of the one of Dal Richards. It seems that I have thrown away all my white shirts. When I spied the T-shirt in an armoire where we keep family heirlooms I thought that it was perfect. It features Lauren’s mother Hilary (our daughter) when she posed for a Children’s Festival poster so many years ago.

As for Lauren who is a serious dancer doing the full program at Arts Umbrella the fact that she maintains her interest in the clarinet and playing for her school’s orchestra makes me very proud.

I cannot forget.

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