Sometimes people enter our lives obliquely. Perhaps a woman boards the bus one stop after you do, year after year. Sometimes you smile, or exchange a nod. Then one day you notice she isn’t there. You realize she has been gone too long for a vacation. Did she stop working? Change jobs? Cities? Is she ever coming back? You feel she should have told you. Your life feels somehow diminished, even though you never even knew her name.

This is a story about one such lady. Some of you will have seen her boarding one of those buses, but even more of you will have seen her walking, striding briskly in the vicinities of Grand Boulevard and Lonsdale Avenue. People in her bank and Safeway and Davies Pharmacy will all know her by name, but a lot of you will only have noticed her outside your window or passing by on the street.

If you were lucky enough to be gardening when she passed by you probably recognized her approach by her cheerful hum. You’d have looked up, pausing to share a few words. Over the years you would have noticed how the lady with the white cane walked with purpose, but was never too busy to stop and chat.

She probably asked how you were doing and apologized if she had forgotten your name. “Well, you know,” she’d explain, “when I lost my sight, I lost my mind.”

Before the accident that ended her career, Shirley McNary was the top female bond underwriter in Vancouver. She drove a white convertible. She worked hard and lived life with gusto.

After a fall down the front stairs of her home in 1983, Shirley’s recovery from severe brain injury was slow. She had to re-learn how to feed herself, to walk. Some memories came back gradually. Most of her vision was gone forever.

Doctors told Shirley she wouldn’t drive again. She wouldn’t be able to hold down a regular job. They told her she would need help to cross the street.

“Phooey on that,” said Shirley. And she walked where she pleased.

Twice a week, Shirley walked to the Margaret Fulton Centre where she worked as a volunteer, playing cribbage or bridge with the seniors. Volunteering came naturally: at the end of World War II, Shirley was still a teenager when she first volunteered to play cards with veterans at Shaughnessy Hospital.

In 2000, the Margaret Fulton Centre moved to Forbes Avenue on the other side of Lonsdale, nearly twice as far away. Shirley walked there, anyway. Every Tuesday and Thursday. Regular as clockwork.

Shirley was always a walker. In the early 1940s she and fellow 8th graders would trek up Grouse Mountain to go skiing. They set out from home near 18th and Cambie at 6 a.m., boarded the Number 17 streetcar to Victory Square on East Hastings, crossed Burrard Inlet by ferry, caught a second bus to Queens and Lonsdale, and then hiked three hours up the mountain to the ski slopes. There were no chairlifts or rope tows. Once they’d skied the run they had to walk back up to the top to start the next run down.

When night fell they made their way back down the mountain. Each girl carried an empty Empress Jam tin, the sides of which had been pierced with nail holes. The tiny constellations of candlelight that leaked through the holes were enough to light their path.

Four days before Christmas 2007 Shirley was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and told she had only weeks to live. She set her affairs in order, instructed friends and family not to cry, and left this earth three and a half weeks later.

Patients with pancreatic cancer become weak, suffer from confusion. When Shirley could no longer string together the words to express what she needed, she could still sing. Following her credo to the end, Shirley’s last words were from a song:

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie
That's amore
When the world seems to shine like you've had too much wine. . .

The lady with the white cane went out singing. She was Shirley McNary. Now you know her name.

Sandra. Kathleen Curran is a North Shore poet, writer and teacher.

Copyright North Shore Magazine Issue Apr - May 08