Vangie Bergum

With great sadness we share that Vangie took her last breath on Friday evening, September 19th. She finally succumbed to the auto-immune disease she had lived with for over forty years. She waited until her family was around the hospital bed in her living room, and quietly left us. Vangie leaves behind a lifetime of those who will miss her gentle words and wisdom. She kept relationships with childhood friends, high school and university classmates, birthing mothers, academic collaborators, students, writing groups, nephews, nieces and cousins, and made new friends in every community she lived in. She was an athlete in every sense, keeping fit with swimming, skiing, running, cycling, dog-walking, and finally, in her last years, regular group yoga.

Vangie found her passion in expressing ideas in words. Her skillful writing, whether academic or personal, reflected her commitment to questioning traditional beliefs that no longer meet society’s needs. After graduating from the first class of UBC’s BSc in Nursing she worked as a public health nurse. But although she had the greatest respect for the profession, she was never comfortable as a nurse. Instead, her interests were met by scholarly pursuits that resulted in publishing numerous books and articles from her research in both the experience of mothering and relational ethics in health care. Her final academic position was Director of the John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre at UofA. As Professor Emerita she continued to write, publish and advise students. But for all her accomplishments, she remained humble, living every day with grace, beauty and love. She has set an example for her children and grandchildren.

Vangie leaves her son Sem with two children Niya and Shae, her daughter Siri with two children Eli and Emmett, and her adoring husband of 56 years, Brault. She was the last of Albert and Edna Vinge’s family of seven children.

Vangie’s family wishes to acknowledge the outstanding support she received in her visits to Emergency at Comox Valley Hospital and from Community Health Services – the extremely busy nurses, physicians and support staff gave her the competent medical attention that she required, with kindness and respect. Vangie was very appreciative of the care she received from Dr. Graham Hatlelid over her last years – he listened closely to her needs.

A gathering of Vangie’s family and friends will be organized in the Spring.

Vangie’s personal reflection on her life and last wishes follow….

My cup runneth over…

The cup that I was handed when born was overflowing with possibility. Born in Canada with its commitment to inclusion and care for one another gave me the steady community where I could pursue all my gifts. I was also born into a family with beliefs and values reflected in a motto written in my father’s careful script—God is Love—in a frame built by my brothers when they were young. Love. That’s it.

My parents were generous and kind to me. They came to my basketball games when I was in my element as a teenager. Oh, how I loved to steal the basketball, race down the court, and gently jump for a layup basket. And they supported me to go to university, which gave my thinking mind lots to ponder. In my father’s generosity he, as pastor, performed my in-the-park April morning wedding to Brault, my husband of fifty-five years. My parents died early in my fourth decade. My baby girl Siri was three months old at the time of my father’s death. Her small warm mouth, eager for life against my breast, softened my experience of his cold dry skin when I placed my hand on his cheek. And Mother. Mother. The last visit my mother made to visit me was in Yellowknife where she wore my parka out in the blowing snow and biting wind to watch the yearly dogsled race. “No,” I said to my brother Joel when he called to tell me Mother had died. “You need to call the hospital and check again.” I had left her the day before in the hope that she was getting better. I was bereft: She left me too soon. My sister, Dorothy, and my brothers Dan, Al, Joel and Mark also died. The circle of my family life experience helps to make me grateful for the vital lessons of death and birth.

There were other lessons too. The church and its teachings were felt in my very core, my body. I was born in the church. Well, almost. I was actually born in the parsonage, church property. An auspicious day, November 11, 1939, a date that turned me against war for all my life. My early life, the proverbial seven years, was filled with Jesus, and Salvation, and Original Sin. Yet toward the end of my third decade those teachings were replaced with the philosophy that I could learn directly from my own experience and be in charge of my own life. No need for doctrine from an outside god, or church. My God was inside me, supporting not belittling me and since then I lived from my heart.

My cup runneth over again when I started long distance running in my seventh decade. What fun, what energy, what joy at being out on the road. Running with Sem down Porto Rico Road, and marathons in China and Norway gave my mothering experience additional texture. And having Siri join us to run in China was perfect. When I had retired and moved to the country, I took up a life task that had been waiting for me, to write the story of my grandparents. That was my hugest and hardest job, as I chose to intersperse my writing about the lives and deaths of my grandparents and two of their daughters, with stories from my own life, particularly about the impact the church had on me. Through training for a marathon during that time I found my legs, so to speak, to stand strong and straight enough to accomplish my calling.

What else did I learn in my life? I learned that I loved a cup of hot coffee (just like my dad) or a cup of earl grey tea with milk. Or loved to walk to the library and pull a book off the shelf. Or walk my dog or do yoga, be outside in nature. Or have conversations about life and death matters, politics, how to get rid of junk. Or sleep with my Brault, in our big bed and with all our connections and bliss, and night-time talks and toasted egg sandwiches. Or talk about pottery or children or anything else with Siri. Or my trip to Norway (the home of my ancestors and my soul sister) with my granddaughter Niya at 15, and my trip to Ottawa and Montreal with grandson Shae at 14, wonderful ways to get to know them better. Or watch Emmett at 9 play hockey or Eli draw his fantastic pictures and all his activities at 12. When I talked about pottery with Siri, I remembered the pottery classes I took when she was just a baby, how I needed some times for re-energizing myself from the work of being a mother of two small children, a gardener, an earth mother canning food, and making meals in the tiny house where Brault and I first lived. Pottery was a personal time to delve into my creativity, which I didn’t even know I had.

I am grateful for all the years of education I had, which opened up many cups full of wonderful experiences as a student, teacher, researcher, and writer in many different places and events. And writing kept me engaged and curious for many hours and years.

At the university, my research exploring women’s experiences of becoming mothers gave me opportunities to contribute to the literature on women’s health. It was there that I decided to take my mother’s name and I have used her name ever since. From my research into mothering relationships of birth, adopting and placing her baby for adoption, I progressed to health care ethics, where again ethical relationships became my research and clinical focus. Writing and producing a number of plays from my research was a highlight that responded to my desire for creativity.

Relationships with family and friends have truly blessed me. The many, many cards and notes I received on my 80th birthday on the prompting of Siri reminded me how much those friends and relatives gave me. Brault, who was my deep gem of a man, my beloved, whose qualities, kindness, and beauty have often left me breathless; Sem, my first born, my rock of Gibraltar, a symbol of resilience and strength that supported me in so many of my life adventures; my daughter Siri, a jewel in my crown, who became her own great and important treasure among great treasures; and their partners whose honesty accepted me as I am; my four grandchildren, Niya, Shae, Eli and Emmett, all grand in their own amazing and unique ways; my childhood friends who have stayed with me for the long haul, my high school classmates, my university classmates, my colleagues during studies and work who became the friends I could not live without; and then there is my first family of siblings, my four brothers, Dan, Albert, Joel and Mark, and one sister, Dorothy, and cousins, nieces and nephews, second cousins, and soul sisters to complete a wide circle of people that I have loved and who have loved me as friends. And of course, my dogs, Sophie and Mahli, and now Gus who are the givers of love with no hesitation. More gems!

In my ninth decade, my passion was trees that led me to my most challenging of adventures, my death. Back in 2014, when I finished my book, Downstream. Bestemor & Me, I wrote: “When it comes my turn to die . . . I want my ashes thrown into the wind to sink to the river’s bottom . . ., as fodder for new growth.” Now I have changed my mind. I want my ashes, at least some of them, or even my body as a whole, to be buried with seeds or saplings that can grow into a tree. Imagine a cemetery full of trees—a forest—where my children, if they want to, could visit me as a birch or a trembling aspen. Where they could hear the birds’ rich songs; smell the harmony of scents, of moss, of flowers, and of pine needles; feel the protection of the mighty oaks, or the breeziness of trembling aspens, and feel the rough bark on their hands. They could breathe in the clean fresh air and let their worries fall away. What could be better than that, for after all trees are here to help save the planet, heal the sick and wounded, and inspire the broken hearted.

Vangie Bergum

July 22, 2022

I do not want a big event, a Celebration of Life. Definitely not. No. But perhaps I would be happy to join my family and friends at a gathering—a send-off—to sing, laugh, cry a little as we remember our time together on this earth—our challenges, and our blessings, our houses and our lands, our friends and our neighbours, our children and our dogs and our ancestral spirits like bestemor, who gave us our foundations. Perhaps a gathering could be a time to remember our precious times, hilarious times, and sad times too. And I would join in the gathering in my new form—a spirit from the realm of the gods—another ancestor: A grandmother, en bestemor, without an unruly heart or tired liver to trouble me anymore. I would be a soul, which Anne Michaels calls having ‘consciousness without matter’.

I want my ashes to be placed in the cemetery plot where my grandparents and two aunts are buried. Out there in Saskatchewan, on the prairie, at the very edge of the cemetery, outcast in a way. I want, as I have done in sharing my family’s secret tragedy, to bring my grandparents back into my life and into the lives of my family.

Vangie Bergum

September, 2025