Judith Ann Genest

Judy leaves behind her husband, Roger Genest; her eldest daughter Catherine Connors, son-in-law Kyle Magill, and grandchildren Emilia and Jasper; her youngest daughter Christina Bawn; her grandson Zach Cole, his fiancee Taylor Morley, and her great-grandchildren Summer Cole, Logan Cole, and Abby Cole; her granddaughter Sophia Bawn. She also leaves John Harvey, her son given up for adoption, and her daughter-in-law Vicky Zimmerman-Harvey and grandson Levi Harvey; her two cats, Coco and Sassy. She is pre-deceased by her grandson, Tanner Bawn, and by her first husband and great love of her life, Steven Connors.

Born in 1942 in Burnaby, British Columbia, Judy led a life filled with stories, hijinks, and laughter. An inveterate adventurer, she joined the Canadian Air Force in her late teens, where — according to the stories that she told her daughters — she was reprimanded more than once due to her love of parties and shenanigans. Still, she managed to leave the Air Force with athletic accolades — as a prize-winning long jumper — and an honourable discharge. Her passion for adventure was fulfilled throughout her life, especially after her marriage to Steven in 1964 — together, they traveled and raised their children in towns and cities across British Columbia and Canada, from the Lower Mainland to the northern reaches of the province and across the country to the nation’s capital. They spent summers and holidays and every available weekend camping, canoeing, rockhounding, and generally exploring the great outdoors, with Judy crafting stories about the Ogopogo, Sasquatch, Falling Rock, and all manner of forest dwellers — real and imaginary — along the way.

Her storytelling prowess was legendary. Judy could hold a room full of children — or adults — captive with her whimsical tales and wittily-spun anecdotes. Whether it was her own children and their peers, her great many friends, her colleagues, or anyone whose path she crossed, she never failed to spark imagination, ideas, emotion, and laughter with her stories and her humour. An Irish uncle once told her that she hadn’t just kissed the Blarney Stone — she’d swallowed it.

Judy was a lifelong advocate and activist, working tirelessly on behalf of children and youth, early on as a volunteer, but ultimately in a professional capacity when she worked her way up from an administrative role at Peak House (Pacific Youth & Family Services Society)— a program supporting youth in finding freedom from problematic substance use — to the position of Executive Director, and later as a board member of the South Cariboo Elizabeth Fry Society. In her youth, Judy studied journalism and held dreams of being a writer — fulfilled through journaling and penning tales for her children, and then later in her much-loved blog Her Bad Grandma and through local journalism — but her greatest and most fulfilling work, by her own assertion, was as a mother and a grandmother.

Many people claim to have had mothers with the title of ‘greatest mother in the world,’ but Judy had very real claims to that title. She brought the full force of her heart, mind, spirit, and imagination to motherhood, putting the very best of herself into its work, care and art, which she considered more important than anything else in this world. She loved fiercely, and she played fiercely, and she was tireless in her efforts to make her children and grandchildren not just feel loved, but to feel liked and respected, and to know that they deserved joy, which she was always happy to provide through jokes, hugs, stories, food, pranks, and any and all means of sparking laughter and delight. Her unique brand of motherhood was the inspiration for her eldest daughter’s award-winning blog, Her Bad Mother, and for more than one press story about new models of grandparenting (including one in the New York Times, which she — true to form — criticized for not meeting her storytelling standards. “They didn’t get the humour right,” she said; she wasn’t wrong.)

Judy loved wine, cats, fly-fishing, Jeopardy, secondhand stores, the chuckers in the hills behind her house, knock-knock jokes, the Similkameen river, the color yellow, hyacinths, dragonflies, St. Christopher, and Mother Mary, although not necessarily in that order. She is almost certainly having a stern word with God, on whatever plane of the universe that meeting takes place, before heading off to explore the infinite realms on her own terms.

She was so dearly loved, and she will be so deeply missed.

A celebration of life will be held at Judy’s home in Cache Creek on July 8; please contact Catherine for details.