Editor:
It is perhaps a sad irony that Gordon Gore passed away at this particular time of great personal and social challenges in our lives.
As we all struggle to understand our relationships with each other, in light of physical distancing, masks and this crazy altered universe we live in, we can boast of having a homegrown superhero, a superb example of real community in our midst who is sadly no more.
Gordie, as we knew him, knew all about the importance and significance of connecting with each other as individuals and as community — and he recorded it all.
Gordie had many grand and prestigious teaching awards, but was an exemplar teacher in other significant ways of which he was not even aware.
Gordie forged his own path. He recognized the importance of our innate human connectedness to each other, a lesson we are all still learning.
He did it with his camera, with his strong sense of community and with his love of people and the world around him.
Before the Big Little Science Center, there was another Gordie Gore. As Westsyde residents for 35 years, we knew Gordie and he knew us as a family. We knew him through his profession as a science and physics teacher, but also through his dedication to gathering an archival library of the life and times of our children and all the other students at Westsyde secondary.
Capturing those images, which will live forever as treasured memories of those halcyon days of their youth, was a passion of his.
It was his way of making connections with all those students and events significant to his community — and he never missed any of them.
Many years later, Gordie called me to let me know he had a lot of pictures of our children taken during their high school years and would I be interested in picking them up.
What treasures they were. My children now have them as concrete reminders of this wonderful man who cared enough to pay attention to them as individuals and to make meaningful connections with his community.
Well done, Gordie, be assured your unique legacy is firmly established for many generations to come and you will be forever remembered as that quiet guy with the camera always in the background but who will be forever foremost in our hearts.
Joan Mcnamee
Kamloops
