Remembrance by Patrick Jamieson, Victoria

I met Susannah Paranich in 1986 when I first moved to Victoria, through my father at St. Andrew cathedral. He ran a refugee sponsorship association titled SARA and always had a table at the entrance of the cathedral to sell church goods and just be a presence to raise money for the cause.

As a result, many people knew and recognized him and donated funds to this earnest, genial, helpful gentleman who had retired from the military at age 55 after 37.5 years of service, having joined as a boy soldier in 1939 at age 17 in Calgary at the start of the war.

Unfortunately Susannah had the impression that I was just a junior version of my father, and we got off on the wrong foot. We stayed friends as artists once things got straightened out.

Susannah, who then went by the name of Della, lived with her mother, or at least had her as a frequent visitor at her studio apartment off Oak Bay Avenue. Also dwelling with her was a Siamese cat named Shanti.

We associated largely as artists, discussing our current ideas around painting and writing, she with her water colours and me with my poetry. We both kept track of our dreams and analyzed them in a Jungian style of analysis. She illustrated the chapbook I was able to put together, titled Resist Two Temptations, which referred to my theory of poetry.

With her painting, I encouraged her to move more in the direction of abstraction. She did in time move quite solidly in that direction, away from what I termed Toni Only style west coast Impressionism. Foggy islands and First Nations burial grounds in a traditional impressionistic realism.

As the years went along, we collaborated consistently. At one point I co-wrote her statement of the metaphysics behind her theory of art, which was published in a local arts magazine called La Rosa, edited by Gregory Hartnell, a friend. She left Victoria for a stint in Ottawa where she had her only sibling, a sister Patricia, living at the time.

Once she resettled on the west coast, in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighborhood, with its thriving arts scene, we stayed in collaborative contact especially after I took over ICN in 2005 when the editor Marnie Butler retired due to encroaching health issues.

We often used Susannah’s paintings as colour illustrations in our pages as the newspaper shifted to a magazine schedule and sensibility. Susannah was doing her own newsletter and regular exhibitions in Vancouver galleries. She started entering very successfully in art display contests in the city, at which she proved quite adroit and adaptive.

I was regularly purchasing her work as gifts for family and friends, who are spread across the country. In the good years, our Vancouver visits followed a sort of routine, while also seeing family and other friends, she and I would connect to spend parts of a few days visiting galleries and arts shows she wanted to see. One memorable show was a retrospective of Gordon Smith’s amazing pieces. Coffee shop stops were part of the routine and a couple of restaurant meals in places she liked or I wanted to introduce her to.

The last year was 2018 after I returned from seven weeks driving to Nova Scotia and back. After that covid struck and my usual car travel routine came to a crashing halt especially after I left travel too late in the autumn and struck a migrating deer at Sicamous, near Salmon Arm, BC.

I was relegated as Susannah’s executor but when the time came, I was far too ill to take it on. Ironically, she died at the same moment I had my worst bout and was hospitalized in July, 2024.

Sadly she was found in her apartment; two cousins were able to take charge of her affairs and estate, ones I had never met. She was buried at Saint Augustine’s October 11, and I was able to watch the touching service live stream.

Her apartment was packed with her art work and coincidentally one of my daughters, Hannah wishes to market her paintings in a new salon gallery she is opening this month in Regina; so our relationship continues.

I once penned for her a self-description of her philosophy of art and spirituality, which were closely entwined together, so I know that our spiritual bond continues.

Very religious in the Ukrainian Catholic tradition, her closest friends and associates were members of the Catholic Women’s League at St. Augustine’s Oblate parish in Kitsilano where she dwelled her last three decades on 8th Ave.

So gifted as an artist, her paintings occupied a unique aspect in contemporary Canadian artwork, at once bold and yet gracious, appealing like her own personality. (see Cover Art) She often yearned for a supportive manager to promote her work and really get it out there into the public. We promoted in the pages of ICN but her work deserved an additional boost of poster production and creative encouragement.

When her mother died at Youville Manor, a Catholic nursing home we knew well, my father and Marnie Butler and I went over to Vancouver to deliver a eulogy at the chapel service there. By a strange coincide , another close friend of Marnie’s was suffering the loss of his mother at Youville at the same time.

Our lives were full of such meanfull coincidences. Susannah, rest in peace.