Around Town: Gathie Falk, Bruce Milne, Robert Smith, The Gallery . . .

Gathie Falk visited her works ‘196 Rotten Apples’ and 30 Grapefruit’ at a Vancouver Art Gallery exhibition last year (from their Facebook page).

Several well known figures have passed away in the past month. All were widely respected and made a significant impact on the broader community.

• Gathie Falk

Gathie Falk died just before Christmas. The Vancouver Art Gallery posted a warm statement about her life and work:

On Monday, December 22, the Canadian art world – and especially the Vancouver art community – lost a towering presence of more than six decades. We are saddened to share that beloved Vancouver artist Gathie Falk (1928 – 2025) has passed away at the age of 97.

One of the most inventive, idiosyncratic and astonishingly prolific artists of her generation, Falk produced ceramics, paintings, sculpture, installation and performance following her first career as a primary school teacher in the 1960s.

Falk defined her work as a “veneration of the ordinary,” and she often used wit and whimsy in her treatment of the common objects of everyday life – rendering them simultaneously familiar and strange.

In her paintings, sculptures, installations and performances, Falk focused on objects and activities from domestic life: fruit, furniture and flowers; eating an egg; reading a book; washing clothes.

Perhaps best known for her iconic ‘Fruit Piles’ – brightly coloured stacks of glistening apples, oranges and grapefruit arranged into pyramids – Falk continued to surprise and delight viewers over the course of her extensive career.

Falk’s work was first exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery in the 1960s as part of the BC Annual Exhibitions – and since that time we have included her work in countless exhibitions including solo presentations in 1970, 1985, 1990 and 2000.

At a time when many women artists faced limited institutional recognition, the Gallery actively acquired Falk’s work from the early days of her career and today holds the most significant collection of her work in public hands – including the foundational ‘Home Environment’ (1968), one of the earliest examples of installation art in Canada.

The Vancouver Art Gallery promised to “prepare a more fitting tribute to this Canadian art legend” early this year.

Inspired magazine featured Gathie Falk in 2019. This image by Tom Gould also appears at the beginning of ‘Gathie Falk: Life & Work.’

An online book by Michelle Jacques – Gathie Falk: Life & Work (Art Canada Institute, 2022) – addressed Falk’s religious upbringing and beliefs.

The ACI’s description of the book begins:

Born to Mennonite parents from Russia in Alexander, Manitoba, Falk and her family moved across the prairies after the death of her father, taking up refuge in different Mennonite communities.

Her memories of these humble beginnings – tending gardens, picking fruit, gathering eggs, her mother sewing and making clothes – became the themes she has explored in her work ever since.

In the ‘Significant and Critical Issues’ section, Jacques writes:

With the emphasis Falk places on the ritual of daily life, and the recurrence of apples, eggs, fish and other Christian symbology in her art, it is tempting to interpret a connection between her religion and her work. However, she has steered viewers away from this method of decoding.

In ‘Statements,’ a text compiled from a series of interviews conducted by Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker with the artist in April 1985, Falk clarified her position: “I decided I would try to be a Christian, rather than try to paint illustrations of Christian teachings. If you have something serious to say, you should be clear about it; if you paint it, it’s not likely that you will be very clear. Something important should be said in words: you should write it or talk it. Better yet, you should live it.”

A February 2019 article in Inspired magazine, based on a visit with Falk at her home, again points to the significance of religion in her life:

Gathie’s attitude about her life, her art and what she looks forward to each day is simplistic and perfectly her. “I look forward to church, to choir and visiting friends. I look forward to having breakfast then going into the studio. The simple things like going for a walk, that’s what I wake up to do every day.” . . .

Although she possesses a tough outer shell, there is a warmth and tender nuance that radiates from her. A spark flickers when she speaks of the people in her life that give her joy – her niece, her nephew, her artistic colleagues, fellow parishioners, her best friend, Elizabeth, and the memory of her brothers and her parents.

Gathie Falk (right) is part of this image from the ‘What to Expect’ page of the St. Margaret’s Cedar Cottage Anglican Church site.

My daughter Katherine got to know Gathie when they were next door neighbours in in east Vancouver around 2010. She remembers her as “a hospitable neighbour and friend. She valued friendship deeply.” Gathie gave her a type-written copy of her memoirs. Katherine also remembers that she regularly attended St. Margaret’s Cedar Cottage Anglican Church.

• Bruce Milne

Bruce Milne was Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church from 1983 – 2001.

Pastor John Tsang announced to the First Baptist congregation that “our former and beloved pastor Bruce Milne – some of you know him well, he has spoken and taught from this very pulpit and platform . . . went to be in the presence of our Lord.”

The Rev. Dr. Bruce Milne was a leading presence in the broader church of Vancouver over a couple of decades, while serving as Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church in downtown Vancouver from 1983 to 2001, teaching courses at Regent College and Carey Theological College and more.

Milne was born in 1940. He taught for a year in Nairobi, Kenya, served as a church-planter in Scotland and taught theology at Spurgeon’s College in London.

His books include Know the Truth, The Message of Heaven and Hell, and Dynamic Diversity: The New Humanity Church for Today and Tomorrow. 

His two children, Andrew and Margaret sent out this notice:

It is with great sadness that we share the news that Bruce died peacefully last night, December 27 at 1:30 am. He is finally at rest in the presence and comfort of God, reunited with Valerie and with his grandson Samuel.

We are profoundly grateful for all of your prayers, support and love for Dad over the years and especially for those who visited and prayed for him as his illness progressed. We are also deeply thankful for the nurses and staff at Broadway Lodge, who cared for him with such dignity and compassion in his final years. 

Bruce lived his entire life, fully and intentionally, in the love and service of Jesus. He was gentle and gracious, welcoming and kind to all he was with, full of love even as his mind and body deteriorated.  Bruce leaves behind a brother Douglas, his two children, Margaret and Andrew, and grandchildren, Callie and Catriona. Thank you for your continued prayers for them.  We look forward to sharing details for his remembrance in the coming days.

These excerpts from Dynamic Diversity give a sense of his priorities, and of why he has been widely appreciated:

The assertion of this book is that all Christian congregations, everywhere, are called to be . . . bridging-places, centres of reconciliation, where all the major diversities which separate human beings are overcome through the supernatural presence of the Holy Spirit. . . .

[T]he calling of every local church, everywhere, if it is to be faithful to its New Testament roots, is, among other things, to be a community of reconciliation in which all the primary divisions and polarities of its surrounding culture are confronted and find resolution under the gracious reign of the Lord Jesus Christ. . . .

We have no mandate to gather Christian communities, claiming Jesus’ name, that are surrounded by walls of exclusivity, whether or race, colour or ethnicity, gender, age or generation, social or economic status, mental and physical well-being; or communities entirely confined to those who come with impeccable histories of moral and spiritual propriety.

A memorial service will be held for Bruce Milne February 21, 1 pm, at First Baptist Church. The church invites others to attend: “You are cordially invited to attend the service to honour the life and ministry of Bruce Milne to his Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. The service will be livestreamed; to join us online, click here.”

• Robert Smith

Robert Smith passed away December 8, 2025.

Robert Smith was a leading figure in the United Church of Canada who spent the last decades of his life in British Columbia. He died in Sechelt December 8.

A remembrance article on the United Church site referred to some highlights in his life.

Here is part of the article

The United Church of Canada grieves the death of The Very Rev. Robert Frederick Smith, the denomination’s 30th Moderator . . .

Born in Montreal in 1934, Rev. Smith served as Moderator of the United Church from 1984 – 1986, and is perhaps best known for delivering the first official Apology from the church to Indigenous Peoples at the 1986 General Council.

In the years after delivering the Apology, he often mused how the church’s course had been forever changed and how he had tried to “make an honest man” of himself by living up to the words of the Apology. . . .

The church across the country offers our deepest condolences to his family, friends and the community of St. John’s United Church in Sechelt. where he was a member.

Smith held pastorates across Canada (Fort St. John, BC; Edmonton, AB; Toronto, ON) and the United States (Quincy, MA). He was pastor at Shaughnessy Heights United Church in Vancouver from 1982 – 1984.

I met Bob a few times, and found him congenial and receptive despite our differing views on some key issues, not least sexual ethics.

He received me one day at Shaughnessy Heights United after someone at the church had sent BC Christian News (which I edited) a tersely worded cancellation of the paper, largely because members were not happy with some of its content. I urged Bob to reconsider, keeping in mind the United Church’s professed ecumenical orientation.

He told me his own doctoral work at Boston University School of Theology had very much focused on ecumenical relations – and allowed us to continue delivering the paper to his church.

Another time he introduced me to his friends at a social justice rally in the Downtown Eastside as “quite a fair-minded fellow, for a fundamentalist” (or something along those lines).

An online memorial service honouring Robert Smith will be livestreamed January 17, 2 pm.

The Gallery at Centre Church

Aimee Ruoff makes paintings, drawings and hand-painted animations from her home studio in Vancouver.

The launch for The Gallery art exhibition will take place next Thursday (January 15, 7 pm) at Centre Church in the downtown core, just across from the Central Library at 777 Homer Street:

As Christians, created in the image of God and filled with the Holy Spirit, we are all imbued with creative power and the ability to make broken things beautiful. Jesus’ glory is what we put on display when we embody His redemptive creativity and artistry.

Our culture is saturated by a limited, reductionist and nihilistic worldview, yet the creative arts speak to the transcendent nature of who God is and who we are invited to become in Him.

Through creating, we express the grace and redemption we’ve experienced in Jesus as He leads us from darkness to light.

We believe that God wants to use artists to enter into the places of brokenness in our city and carry God’s own Spirit of power and redemption to make these places overflow with His light and transformative beauty.

We want to be a church who supports artists in that process.

Work by Aimee Gee, Lindsey Taylor and Aimee Ruoff will be featured. The exhibition will run from January 15 to March 8.

Events are listed below, but there is also an Events page and a Jobs page on the Church for Vancouver site.