08/14/2026
Today, on a mountain overlooking the beautiful Okanagan Valley, I laid to rest the ashes of my Dad, my older brother LB, and my younger brother Jevon.
LB passed away in 2010, far too young. He had property here and always said this was where he wanted his ashes to be.
After he died, my Dad kept his ashes. He did the same with Jevon’s when we lost him in 2016, also far too young.
When my Dad passed away at his home in Calgary this January, it fell to me to close out his affairs. And there, among everything he had accumulated over a lifetime, I found my brothers’ ashes.
I also discovered so much about the three of them that I never knew.
They were close. They had plans together - travel, adventures, simply spending more time with one another. Dad’s friends and neighbours told me stories about their lives together, and about him. He was respected and deeply loved in his neighbourhood. I came away knowing more about my father than I had before, while realizing there was still so much of his life I would never know.
Dad was cremated too.
I travelled home to Vancouver with all three of them. Their ashes were the only things I took from Dad’s home.
And when I came to the Okanagan for work on a film this spring, they came with me.
Over the past few months I’ve hiked these mountains looking for the right place. Last week I found it.
On a quiet, remote piece of earth overlooking the lake, I gave them their space - side by side, back to the earth, together again.
Next spring I’ll return and plant a tree for each of them in this very spot.
We wrapped our film yesterday, and tomorrow I return home to Vancouver. Another chapter finished. New adventures ahead.
But I leave the Okanagan differently than I arrived.
I already loved this place. Now my Dad, LB and Jevon have connected me to it forever.
Another one of my homes.
