Sharon Jade Proctor

Sharon Jade Proctor (January 1, 1939 to May 12, 2025)

Sharon’s life began when the world marked the beginning of a New Year, 1939. Indeed, she was the first baby girl born in Phoenix, Arizona that year, and was showered with gifts befitting the occasion.

Sharon’s parents, Ralph and Claire, were avid photographers. In the 1940s, 50s and 60s their colour photos of desert flowers and plants could be seen throughout the world on playing cards, advertisements, curtains, table cloths and other venues. While they set up their giant Speed Graphic camera, little Sharon would round up desert creatures such as horned lizards, and play with them before returning them gently to their homes. Her love of animals and the desert began there.

Sharon attended both primary and secondary schools in Phoenix before shifting southward to the University of Arizona in Tucson. She earned a degree in Zoology there after which she won a number of scholarships enabling her to attend Stanford University, where she earned a Ph.D.

In 1964 she was one of four graduate students (plus faculty and support crew) on board Te Vega, the university’s research vessel. Sharon spent 10 weeks on the Indian Ocean studying ocean layers. In true maritime fashion, she fell in love with the ship’s doctor.

But Sharon was not destined for the academic world. Much to the chagrin of her major professor at Stanford, in 1967 she turned her back on research and academia and accepted an appointment as Curator of Education and Public Communication at what was then known as the Vancouver Public Aquarium. She remained there until 1991; at one time she served on the board of the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums (AAZPA).

In 1976, she met her future husband, David A. Rodger, Director of Vancouver’s HR MacMillan Planetarium. They were married in 1978. It was a running joke that if David and Sharon had a child, it would have to be named “Star-fish.” It didn’t happen.

Sharon left the Aquarium in 1991 and recreated herself as a freelance editor and writer for BC’s growing technology sector. And for awhile she even had a newspaper column on ocean topics. The Canadian Federal Government appointed her to the Board of the International Centre for Ocean Development, a Crown corporation based in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Then came another switch. Her love of animals well established, she turned to volunteering. She had developed a keen sense of local North Vancouver history and used it to help lead the Friends of the North Vancouver Museum and Archives, a non-profit organization set up to raise money for and interest in the North Vancouver Museum and Archives.

Her major achievement in this vane was a book entitled “Time Travel in North Vancouver.” The book showed buildings, homes, neighbourhoods and businesses as they once were and as they are today. She transferred the royalties from the sale of the book to the Friends. For this achievement she was named Volunteer of the Year by the Canadian Museums Association. It was a fitting way for her to end her busy and productive career.

On May 12, 2025 Sharon died peacefully in her North Vancouver townhouse, her husband David and his adult daughters Nicki Forster and Lisa Rodger close by. Although she had no direct descendants, Sharon’s extended family included two nieces, Roberta Brown and Amanda Dell, both of whom live in the USA