I met Theresa a week before Halloween 1990. She was dressed as Tiny Tim from the Dicken's stories, complete with freckles, crutches and a real cast on her foot, I still have pictures. Many of the details of that night are now lost in the mists of time, but by the end of that week I knew I had made a best friend. We spent alot of time together. So much time that I was placed on academic probation that year. I wasn't too concerned about school grades but I was very interested in my time with Theresa. There were many classes missed for conversation with her about life and the world. Theresa was so smart and her tongue could be sharp, but she wasn't often wrong and she didn't have time for childish games.

Our relationship was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. Theresa forced me to open my mind and grow into the realities of the world. I can directly attribute some of the most important characteristics of myself today and my place in the world, to our friendship. Theresa had gotten involved with a boy from Calgary who vehemently argued that one person could not make any difference in the world. Instead she was a single person who made a difference in my life.

Theresa passionately believed in ideas and values, she was the first activist I had ever met. Her experience with Amnesty International was my introduction to the concept of 'social justice'. At the time these ideas were part of her odd traits which I didn't understand but accepted because they were a part of this fascinating women with the impish smile. Theresa was planting seeds in my soul which have shaped my life ever since and forever will.

I can hear the love in her voice when she spoke of the mountains around Terrace and the life she had experienced there growing up with her family. Her soft eyes, grace in the water and conviction that she was a seal when she was swimming convinced me, too, that she had once lived in the ocean. Theresa's connection to the natural world, the passion in her voice and our walks on the beach, brought me to take a hiking trip in the mountains the following summer and again my life has never been the same.

On our last day together in the University of Victoria residence where we had lived, I took Theresa on surprise trip. I blindfolded her eyes and taking her hand lead her down to the beach on the bay near the school. In my backpack I had prepared a picnic for us to share on the beach. I made her keep her eyes covered while I arranged the meal so that it would be perfect when she opened her eyes. I came around in front of her and as I lifted the scarf, Theresa opend her eyes to a beautiful black dog swallowing most of our lunch in a drive by galloping plunder. I gave angry pursuit as Theresa broke out into joyful laughter because she was cheering for the dog.

I'm a little shy of 30 today but even now so many details are fuzzy from 10 years ago. I can't exactly place when it was that she and I decided to make a trip together from Vancouver to Terrace, to visit her family and see the land she was so in love with and a part of. I have so many clear memories of that trip. We crossed the Nass Valley and saw the Lava flows; the waterfall where we stopped for lunch and she secretly took my picture. We went to Stewart where she had been working as a lifeguard and visited her favorite glacier, who she spoke to like an old friend.

Theresa and I shared a relationship for over a year. How long we could never agree on and it really never mattered as boy/girlfriend became Friend and the foundation of love and mutual respect allowed us to keep building our relationship. Life moved on in Victoria and we had very different circles of friends, very different lives. We mostly ran into one another but would then talk with intimacy and joy. After I left Victoria in 1995 I began to see Theresa perhaps a couple of times a year if I was lucky. The years seem to be going by faster and faster.

We always kept in touch and I never wavered in my love for her. Theresa is in a very, very special place in my heart. I never doubted that I would know her the rest of my life. Her passing is still so unreal to me, I have never lost someone so close before. We exchanged email a few weeks before her death. In her mail she spoke of coming to visit me in the Elaho valley where I will be living in a tree this summer.

I will be living there as an act of protest against the destruction of the natural world whose beauty and sacredness she open my eyes and heart to. Theresa always had a special name my mother gave her after she first came to visit my parents: Tree. Her last email to me was signed that way. The tree where I do live this summer will be named Tree-sa so that she can be with me still and know what I am doing; I will have a picture of her with me and I will write down everything I can remember of the joy I was blessed to feel knowing her. I will also take up my tree the painting I have always had on the wall of my room since she painted it eleven years ago, inside the painting are the words I Love You. I Love You too

Theresa Newhouse you are one of my dearest friends, thank you for being a part of my life. Everyone I know who has known her, always remembers her spark and energy, her intelligence and heart, her strength and her love. I will never forget her and I will always love her the rest of my life.

Bryce Gilroy-Scott