Inglewood, Motherhood and Friendship By Lisa Kadane
This story begins nearly seven years ago, on the porch of my home in Inglewood. Tamara and I were both on maternity leave from the Calgary Herald and she’d walked over for a visit, pushing a stroller holding her newborn, a baby girl named Bronwyn. When I opened the front door to greet Tamara, the sound of Bronwyn’s deafening cry filled the house. Tamara took one look at my newborn son Bennett, slumbering peacefully atop his nursing pillow, and kept her shrieking infant outside secure in the baby bucket.
That one gesture—leaving her daughter to wail at all of Inglewood, a “Do you remember when…” that we still laugh about—endeared Tamara to me in our first moment of shared motherhood. I loved her practical approach: that day she had tried everything to stop Bronwyn’s crying—feeding her, changing her diaper, offering a soother, walking her—finally, Tamara figured her baby girl was going to scream no matter what, and left her to it on the porch so she could steal a few minutes of serenity inside my house.
We spent many baby play dates together that year, and continued comparing parenting notes as our children started daycare at the Herald. Bennett and Bronwyn were each other’s first friend and, in many ways, Tamara and I grew our friendship through them, by commiserating over sleepless nights and mysterious cases of diaper rash. As they grew, we met up at Inglewood’s Nellie Breen playground to catch up while the kids chased each other around the park. While there we got to know other moms with young children in the ‘hood.
Some say that being a parent brings you closer to your community—you meet other families at the park or through the school. I agree that’s true—when I left the Herald three years ago Tamara and I no longer had the newsroom in common, but our shared neighbourhood kept us close through spontaneous park playdates or post work-out chats at the nearby Talisman Centre. And then there was last year’s flood event, a crisis that brought all of Inglewood together—a phenomenon that Tamara wrote about recently for the Herald. It was during the flood that I realized what a good friend Tamara had become.
With Inglewood evacuated and our house under threat of falling into the Bow River, Tamara was there, emailing me daily to check on our family and home during those crazy June days.
“I can’t stop worrying about you—what is happening?” read one message.
“My heart breaks for you, Lisa… let me know if there is ANYTHING I can do to help,” read another.
One-year-old Bennett and Bronwyn
Tamara pledged her support during our time of need, offering to take Bennett while we dealt with a soggy basement. She also expressed her feelings for the neighbourhood we share when we didn’t know whether its future would be dry or under water.
“I feel so sad. I love Inglewood so much…”
Her final note before the crisis ended stays with me still: “This terrible adventure will have a happy ending, I promise,” she wrote. I ran into her later that day at the Inglewood Community Hall, where neighbours gathered to share meals, volunteer help and exchange stories and words of support and encouragement. We hugged, awash with relief we’d weathered the flood and had come out treading water on the other side.
Tamara had my back during that difficult time, just like she’d been there during the early years of night wakings, and later when I worried about my son’s developmental delays. I—like so many others whose lives she has touched—want to have her back now as she battles cancer.
All those words she wrote to me last year are eerily echoed by me to Tamara, this year. I can’t stop worrying about her, my heart breaks for her, I feel so sad, I just want to help—we all do because we love her so much.
I just wish I could promise her a happy ending.
If you know Tamara, you love Tamara By Colette Derworiz
I knew Tamara before I even met Tamara.
In April 1999, straight out of journalism school, I joined the Calgary Herald as a summer intern in the City department. The other intern was Heath.
He and I became friends — despite the inevitable competition that can come with being an intern.
I quickly learned that Heath was a fierce competitor and a tough journalist. He was also completely and totally in love with this girl named Tamara. He had met this brilliant, beautiful blonde at journalism school in Toronto and knew she was the one.
When he asked if I could work his Saturday shift, so he could propose to the love of his life, of course I said yes.
Most importantly, she said yes.
They hiked to the top of Mount Rundle in Banff — or, as close as they could get before they hit snow. There, they committed their lives to one another.
Since then, Tamara and I have also become both colleagues and friends at the Herald, where I’ve gotten to know her even better.
I’ve witnessed her intelligence as a journalist.
I've taken her side when she and Heath bickered over whether Bronwyn's name should be spelled with a 'y' or an 'e' (clearly, Heath won — although Tamara told me recently she still thinks it should be an 'e').
I've watched them raise the most beautiful family and support each other through thick and thin.
The love I first saw in Heath’s eyes for this amazing woman is still there today, stronger than ever.
Over the years, I've learned exactly why.
She's strong, smart, kind and wonderful.
The Cure there would still be so much that we didn’t have time to talk or laugh about.
My father was always in disbelief at how I would come home from a day or evening with Tamara and immediately run upstairs to my room so we could continue our conversations on the phone. He always wondered what more we could possibly have to say to each other. He recently told me he always knew I was on the phone with Tamara because of the way I was laughing.
Despite attending different universities and now living in different provinces, our friendship remains strong. Now it’s my husband who knows when I’m talking to Tamara because of the way I am laughing.
There are some things that time or circumstances cannot change. Earlier this summer, when I was visiting Tamara in the hospital, her dad poked his head in her room to tell us that he could hear us laughing all the way down the hall.
I love you Tamara! Keep laughing!
This September marks 29 years of treasured friendship with one of my most favourite people on this planet.
Tamara had just joined our school in Pickering. During that first week, our teacher ‘volunteered’ Tamara and I for lunch hour drink duty. Each day, kids would line up out front of the school’s custodial/supply room where Tamara and I would hand out milk, chocolate milk, or the ever popular ‘orange drink’ in exchange for 35 cents.
As you might imagine, no kid is overly keen to give up part of their lunch hour to carry out such a mundane task. However, it wasn’t long before I was anxiously looking at the clock for that moment when the ‘new kid’ and I could slip out 10 minutes early so we could prepare our drink station in the musty supply room and play our daily game of ‘what’s that smell’ (I still have no idea what that smell was, but I know that as you are reading this Tamara, you are remembering it).
Those early days of our budding friendship set the tone for the remaining years. When I think of Tamara, so many wonderful words come to mind, but today I will focus on the word ‘laughter’.
I never laugh so hard as when I’m with Tamara. This is mainly because a) she’s insanely funny, and b) she has THE BEST laugh. It’s this spirited, contagious laugh —the kind that makes you laugh harder when you hear it. Back in grade school we would get scolding looks from teachers for laughing during school assemblies, laughing in class, and the odd time, laughing during mass (it was a Catholic school).
We weren’t overly disruptive, and we were always respectful to the teachers, so we never really got in trouble. There was only one teacher who really didn’t appreciate our ‘good-naturedness’ — we couldn’t stop giggling in the library. She punished us by sending us to the kindergarten class (not that we learned much of a lesson. There was a water station in the classroom –what fun!). The futility of the punishment only made us laugh harder.
As we progressed through high school, our friendship (and our hair) continued to grow. Given all the melodrama that accompanies the reality of being a teenage girl, I knew I could always turn to Tamara for advice, consolation, and of course, a good laugh. Even after endless hours spent together at school or at each other’s houses listening to The Smiths, New Order, and
Tamara & Jenn circa 1990 near Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto
29 Years of Treasured Friendship By Jennifer Bridge
Shine On By Heath McCoy
"Is my mommy going to die?"
God, that's a dreadful question to hear from the lips of a sick at heart six-year-old girl.
I've had way too many conversations on that terrible topic this summer. They always come in those quiet, introspective moments, either at bedtime or in the morning, when there are no play dates or camps to help my Bronwyn block out all the confusion and fright she's experiencing.
"I'm sad," she tells me, snuggling next to me in bed, in the spot where she knows her cherished mother should be.
"I'm sad too," I assure her. "But we're here for each other. I'm here to talk to you anytime, sweetheart."
Then I take a deep breath and force out those words that never stop hurting. "We hope mommy doesn't die. That's why she has to be in the hospital, because she's fighting to live."
It's a harsh truth to present to a little girl, so full of sunshine and love, but I have to be as honest as one can with somebody so young. I owe her that. If I promise a happy ending and things don't go our way, she might never trust me again.
This is the new reality my family is faced with. Last June, out of nowhere – with what seemed like only a lingering stomach flu as a warning – my beautiful, talented wife, Calgary Herald journalist and assignment editor Tamara Gignac, was diagnosed with inoperable Stage IV colon cancer. By then, the cancer had spread to her liver. It has scorched our world like a bomb blast.
Since receiving the devastating news our summer has seen a revolving door of doctors and nurses, weeks of hospital time, endlessly frustrating health care bureaucracy, brutal bouts of chemotherapy and a chaotic and ever-shifting life based around Tamara's chaotic and ever-shifting condition. Do I try to put in a work shift or does my wife need me by her side? And which one of our friends and family members is available on any given day to help with our childcare needs?
We feel like we never know from one moment to the next. It's been especially challenging on the family front because most of our relatives are out of province, Tamara being an Ontario girl and me from Saskatchewan.
Indeed, plans constantly change as Tamara's sickness, reaction to the chemo and the corresponding treatment regime fluctuates.
It feels like we’re stuck on the world’s meanest roller coaster.
Tears? Yeah, there's been a few. Tears of sadness, fear, anger, frustration, and just the pure, raw desire to live.
Through it all I've watched this impressively fit woman, with whom I've hiked up the Inca Trail, wither away by nearly 40 pounds, with a blockage in her colon making it nearly impossible for her to eat for over a month, until at last, she had surgery. Along with the blockage came unbelievable pain. On one horrifying night Tamara’s agony was so intense she imagined the Grim Reaper had her in a death lock, the cruel beast rattling every bone in her body.
It’s been shocking to witness. A mere week before her diagnosis, my wife was training to do the Harvest Half Marathon at Fish Creek Park, routinely putting in hours on the Talisman Centre treadmills.
How did this happen?
Even my three-year-old son Finn knows something is not right. Because of his age we’ve often assumed that he’s less traumatized than his sister by what’s happening, blissfully unaware of the situation. But I see his confusion when he goes to bed for yet another night without a kiss from his mommy. I watched his panic the day the revolving door at the entrance to the Tom Baker Cancer Centre nearly bowled his weakened mother over. After that, whenever we said goodbye to her at those doors he was always full of anxiety. “Mama! Mama! Be careful with the spinny door!” I feel his worry.
For my part, I’ve tried to be a pillar of strength and support for our family, always focused on what must be done. I've resolved to
Heath and Tamara supporting one other through the harsh realities of Tamara's cancer diagnosis. Photo by Leah Hennel
This instant photo of Tamara and Heath was snapped at a house party when the couple first began dating in 1998. They met while attending journalism school at Ryerson University in Toronto.
maintain a positive and hopeful outlook. This is important, I believe, because Tamara needs one hell of a corner man as she fights these dragons living inside of her. I need to be rock solid. That’s not easy, because there are moments when I feel like I’m suffocating, but I can’t crumble. My kids need me. Tamara needs me.
It’s a testament to her tremendous inner strength that she’s often helped pull me through in these dark moments. She constantly amazes me with her grace, spirit and bravery in the face of this nightmare predicament. In the hospital I could see that her nurses genuinely came to like her and it was easy to see why. Her upbeat attitude and kindness – even in her most tortured moments she always treated them with respect – was inspirational. I get the feeling those nurses don’t see a lot of smiles in their ward. Tamara almost always had a smile for them.
I sat with her on her birthday this year, as she began her second round of chemo. “I’m sorry you have to spend your birthday here, honey,” said one of the nurses. “I’m not,” replied Tamara, with a determination that made me swell with pride. “This is a good thing. It means I’ll still be here for my next birthday. I’m happy to be here.”
No wonder Tamara’s oncologist calls her his star.
She’s a star to a lot of us. To our wonderful children, to our family members, to our friends who love her so much that they’ve moved mountains to provide aid. Truly we are overwhelmed by the support we’ve had from Team Tamara, our families, and from so many members of our community.
Tamara is also a star to me and I stubbornly refuse to believe she'll stop shining any time soon. I'll never give up hope.
Keep fighting, my love. Shine on.
Tamara Takes the Wheel By Grant Black
One of the first things you learn in the newspaper business is that the photographer always drives.
And so I was behind the wheel of a rental car with Tamara Gignac in the passenger seat as we headed north and east of Calgary to the small town of St. Paul.
The story: the anniversary of the Bre-X scandal. For those of you with short memories, Bre-X was a Canadian mining company that defrauded investors of millions when their Indonesian gold mine turned out to be, well, not a gold mine.
Hundreds of those investors came from St. Paul.
The cynical old photographer (me) thought nobody would talk to us about their embarrassing losses, but Tamara was optimistic. I thought I was going to have a nice drive in the country. It was spring, the sky was blue and the promise of a beautiful Alberta summer was around the corner.
Tamara had a line on a guy who’d suffered a big loss and she thought he might talk. I thought he’d give us the bum’s rush. I hoped St. Paul had a decent restaurant.
After stopping at the UFO landing pad, St. Paul’s claim to fame, we found the shop. I threw a camera over my shoulder and we headed to the door.
Did I mention that Tamara was pregnant? I mean really pregnant. So pregnant, that as I drove I noted the roadside signs that give directions to local hospitals.
Tamara charmed him and a couple of minutes later we were in the lunchroom and the crusty old electrician was actually opening up and talking about his losses. I couldn’t believe it. The interview lasted well over an hour and Tamara skillfully made him comfortable with us first, and then asked the tough questions later.
As the interview came to a close, he asked us if we would like to join him for dinner at his favourite restaurant. We accepted his invitation and he called the restaurateur to make a reservation. He also asked the owner to get three bottles of his favourite wine.
The dinner was delightful and our man was a wonderful raconteur telling stories about his business and his life. And the wine flowed. Tamara, of course, didn’t drink. My glass was never empty. After three hours and three shared bottles of wine, I was in no condition to drive.
So that night, a rare event happened in a small town in northeastern Alberta.
Tamara, the reporter, got to drive.
Tamara, pregnant with Bronwyn.
Grant Black took this photo at the UFO landing pad in
St. Paul while he and Tamara were there working on a story.
TAMARA THURSDAYS ARCHIVE
Tamara tells us how much your support has meant to her and her family.
Timeless Friendship By Carrie Hunter
When I walked into the restaurant, she was already waiting at the table. As soon as Tamara saw me she sprang to her feet and wrapped me in a warm embrace. “You haven’t changed a bit,” she said. It was hardly the truth, but so in keeping with Tamara.
I had just relocated from Calgary to Toronto after 18 years. To say it had been a difficult transition would be akin to a woman announcing she was a little bit pregnant. But that night sitting across from Tamara, catching up over a couple of lovely glasses of wine and bowls of pasta, it felt like no time had passed. I remember marvelling at how easy it was to talk to her, confide in and laugh with her. For the first time in months, I felt at ease.
This is the way it had always been with us. Although Tamara and I had both attended Ryerson for journalism, it was a job at then start-up Chapters Online in 1998 that brought us together. Tam became my right-hand as we toiled for long hours building content for the Chapters site. The whole time — including a move from a desolate, nondescript building just a few km from the airport to swanky, urban digs on Peter St. and numerous “team building” exercises at Alice Fazooli’s courtesy of my corporate card — was, literally and metaphorically, intoxicating.
The pinnacle of our adventure arrived one day when the then president Rick Segal announced he was sending me, and a friend of my choice, on a two-night retreat to a beautiful, elegant spa just north of the city. Of course I chose Tamara to accompany me on this luxurious adventure. What I recall most vividly is arriving at the spa, checking into our accommodation, and both of us being in absolute awe at the luxury and splendour of what was really a rustic cottage outfitted with every conceivable amenity.
Uncorking the first bottle of wine, we sat down and talked about everything and nothing as the sunset around us. Even though we spent the better part of everyday (and sometimes nights) working together, we always seemed to unearth fresh conversational territory. Those two nights were no exception.
In between the decadent meals, massages and pedicures (and, of course, more wine), our friendship evolved and solidified in a way most people in their 20s would never imagine. It was a friendship that would sustain prolonged physical absences.
I was reminded of this on a chilly Calgary evening as we sat huddled in the restaurant, wine glasses in hand, exchanging intimacies that spanned too many years. I felt like I always had with Tamara: happy, joyful and content. That’s just one of the gifts her remarkable spirit bestows upon her friends.
I love you, Tamara. Forever, and always.
There was work too, of course. Few people can edit like Tamara. I was amazed at how when editing my work she honed in on the sentences I was struggling with and, with a deft touch, made them right.
Tamara was the first person in the newsroom to find out in 2013 I was leaving the Herald for a PR job and I was nervous to tell her. Well, maybe nervous isn't the right word. I was disappointed. Disappointed I'd lose out on Bobcat Saturday chats and the therapy, laughter and comfort they provided.
After leaving the Herald, I'd often find myself wondering on Saturdays what Tamara and the Saturday crew were up to. "I wonder if it's a bobcat?" I'd think.
When I learned of Tamara's cancer diagnosis, I was shocked. I wanted nothing more than a day in the newsroom, full bobcat in effect, and to chat with Tamara.
A couple weeks later, she sent me a text with a photo of a gift she'd recieved, a stuffed bobcat, along with this message: "My cancer better not fuck with this feline."
The Bobcat: Faithful chemo companion.
The day was Saturday, December 29, 2012.
In the pantheon of journalism history, it will not go down as a momentous day for anyone, but for four bored journalists in the Herald newsroom.
What happened that day? Nothing. Seriously. In a city of over a million people, there was no news. Yet the website needed something new and we were stuck trying to find something newsworthy to publish.
Public institutions - a trusted source of filler on slow news days - were all closed for the holidays. Even the police scanner was oddly quiet.
These are not the days aspiring journalists dream of. As the Saturday assignment editor, it fell to Tamara to find something for us to fill the website and we knew, frankly, standards were going to drop. Finding news on slow days is tough but our Saturday crew was going to find something.
Then came the gift: the scanner came to life. A bobcat was spotted on the western edge of town. One brief mention, that's it, and we were off.
On the police desk, I called emergency services. General assignment reporter Trevor Howell worked the phones. Meghan Potkins, in charge of the website for the day, was no doubt looking forward to new content.
We all tried. We did. But nothing.
And then it dawned on us how absolutely ridiculous the whole affair was and how, really, it was ludicrous to spend so much time and effort on a suspected bobcat sighting.
Tired, stressed and, likely all wanting to be elsewhere, we broke out laughing.
And so was born the inside joke of the "Bobcat Saturday" - defined as a news day so incredibly slow that a possible animal sighting is even considered as major breaking news.
The bobcat became a code.
"Bobcat?" we'd later come to ask each other on Saturdays when we wanted to know if it was busy. A bobcat day could be good - like when you needed time to work on a project, or it could be dull.
For me, bobcat meant something else.
It's not easy working Saturdays. Journalists know they have to, yet it's always tough to leave your family on a day when it feels like the whole city is out enjoying the weekend.
Working Saturdays with Tamara, though, made the days fly by. For close to two years we sat nearby and around the police scanner, and with no bosses around, Saturdays became a personal highlight because of Tamara. We spent hours and hours chatting on those Bobcat Saturdays.
As the mom to a young, energetic toddler boy, Tamara would tell me stories of her week with Finn. I'd fill her in with stories about my energetic toddler boy.
We talked about travel, restaurants and wanting to be in California. We griped about work and, usually, the challenges of parenthood. For hours on those Bobcat Saturdays I could catch up with my friend and the day flew by.
The Birth of the Bobcat By Stéphane Massinon
Tamara: Reporter, Editor, Mom By Sherri Zickefoose
When I arrived post-strike, the Calgary Herald newsroom was filled with staff so photogenic that Peter Menzies boasted it was like working with the cast of Friends.
The junior newsroom was a tightly bonded crew.
They worked hard and played harder. Back in the early 2000s, there were pages of news hole to fill and career highlight stories to chase. All of it was rewarded with booze-fuelled karaoke nights (the genesis of the infamous Jason Fekete White Snake leg kicks).
The years marched on and the newsroom was inevitably growing up. Along with countless city scoops, award-winning photos and national news stories came all manner of milestones: engagements, weddings, mortgages, and babies. The karaoke runaways became fewer, the Saturday shifts less headachy.
Last year, I shared Saturdays with Tamara. Our skeleton crew had no shortage of assignments keeping us busy, but the day suffered a certain Groundhog Day feel: the unreachable spokespeople, the irate reader phone calls over misprinted crossword puzzles or undelivered newspapers. Tamara handled all of it like a pro.
When we weren't snickering about spite shopping during slow shifts or swapping Sauvignon blanc sale news, our talk turned to craft and story. We shared Poynter Institute's national writers workshop memories and excitedly dissected mind-blowing feature stories that inspired us. We ran through our wish lists of investigations and stories we wanted to nail.
These Saturdays also let me catch glimpses of Tamara outside of her role in the assignment editor's chair.
I got to see Tamara as a mom. Some days Bronwyn or Finn, or sometimes both, would visit the newsroom briefly as their parents juggled schedules.
I loved seeing and hearing Tamara - the efficient, no-nonsense journalist - as a wonderful, loving mother. Caring, guiding and in charge.
On one of my final Saturday shifts, I snapped this quick photo with my phone.
When the candy vending machine and big screen television lost her interest, Bronwyn slipped over to sit at her mom's desk.
Tamara was engrossed interviewing a source over the phone, and busy wrapping up the days' stories. And there is Bronwyn, scribbling furiously in a reporter's notebook; a pint-sized scribe at Tamara's side.
It is a precious moment that tells a great story: Bronwyn wanting to be just like her mom.
Tamara in the Herald newsroom, with cub reporter Bronwyn
