Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Pamela Beatrice Harold (nee Drake) passed away on July 6, 2022, at the age of 89.
Born on Sept. 19, 1932, Pam grew up in the small town of Rossland, B.C. from 1932 to 1945, where her father worked for the Trail smelter and her mother was a homemaker, gardener, weaver, and guide leader.
"I loved walking home in the dark, looking towards the streetlights and watching the snow fall, the flakes showing up against the glowing circle of light. The silently falling snow made me feel protected."
In 1945, the family moved to Okanagan Mission, where Pam finished high school. Having started painting at an early age, she applied for a scholarship to attend the Banff Summer School of the Arts.
At the age of 17 Pam took a train by herself to Banff where she studied the arts and found her life's passion. "My parents gave me the best art lessons by encouraging me to observe the world around me. My mother with her weaving and love of flowers taught me about color."
Pam went on to teachers' college and started teaching, saving up enough money to spend five months traveling through Europe with girlfriends. She then attended the Vancouver School of Art, where she earned an Elementary Art Teaching Certificate and taught art to grades 4 to 8.
In 1961, Pam married her first husband, Vernon Forster, and started a family. While raising her two daughters, she took night courses and fell in love with watercolor painting. This would be the next step in a lifelong pursuit that only ended when her hands were too shaky to steady a paint brush and her memory began to fail at the age of 85.
In 1974 Pam moved with her family to the small fishing village of Seabright, Nova Scotia where she worked with her husband to start a new business and create a rural home for their daughters.
She began devoting more time to painting and helped found the French Village Painters. In 1979, the family moved back to Vancouver, where she became an active member of the Federation of Canadian Artists.
At the age of 50 Pam remarried to Bill Harold and moved to Edmonds, where she lived an enviable life with a loving partner, continuing her painting, gardening, tennis, and travels. She was an active member of the Women Painters of Washington and sat on the board of the Edmonds Arts Commission.
While Pam's art will be a legacy that will live on long after the rest of us have passed on, she will also be remembered as an amazing mother, grandmother, friend, gardener, cook, beachcomber, and traveler.
She could host an exceptional dinner party, build a barn door, plant a large vegetable garden, sew her own clothes, throw the best kids birthday parties, write a poem about anything, give you her opinion on countless topics, and make magic out of nothing.
She had the kind of home that made you want to nestle into a soft chair and stay forever. She had an art studio that she opened to anyone who wanted to explore their creative side and spent many patient hours with her grandchildren creating "masterpieces."
She will be deeply missed by her family.
Survived by daughters Victoria Forster, Elizabeth Askey (Ethan Askey), and stepdaughter Nance Fullagar (Peter Fullagar); grandchildren Bronwyn Fullagar, Andrea Fullagar (Gord McDonald), Claire Askey, and Forster Buttery; and first husband Vernon Forster.
Predeceased by parents Arthur and Dorothy Drake, sister Nancy Pollard (Jimmy Pollard) and husband William (Bill) Harold.
There will be a small gathering of family and friends at a later date. No formal funeral will take place. If you would like to do something in honor of Pam, please consider donating to the Edmonds Center for the Arts, take some time to nourish your creative self, or just go dig in the garden.
