Rosemarie Bowick always made a difference

Jeff Green | Jun 02, 2021

I met Rosemarie Bowick sometime after she and her husband Bill decided to 'retire' to Sharbot Lake in the late 1990s.

I always thought of them as co-conspirators. Even though they would take on their own projects, the other one would be, happily or not, drafted to help out. It was much like that when Rosemarie started up the Festival of Trees to support Villages Beautiful, a group she co-founded to enhance the villages in Central Frontenac by planting flowers and putting up benches, among other projects.

Bill talked about being 'volun-told', when he helped out, when it turned out that the festival required a lot more work than anyone had envisioned. After the first Festival of Trees, Rosemarie figured it would have a five-year run, but it became more popular every year, and is still the major fundraiser for Villages Beautiful

Rosemarie, for her part, always helped out at the Masonic Lodge, where Bill was a member, even though women are not invited to be Lodge members. I wondered, at one time, how someone like Rosemarie, who never gave in to anything, much less male privilege, was okay with the way the Masons operated, but I realised, after a while, that she treated it as Bill's thing and she was happy to support it and save her organising energy for her own ventures.

She started the “Friday Night Ladies” who get together once a month to drink wine, snack and talk, and toss some money into a pot for a community group or individual who needs a few dollars.

She also spent a lot of time with family, taking care of her mother and providing support for Bill and her children and grandchildren.

She pretty much worked full time, on volunteer enterprises mostly, as well as family events, for over 20 years. She never gave the impression that it was a chore for her to be so active.

She had a lot of energy, liked to laugh, and make her community a better place to live.

When she died three weeks ago, it was one of those deaths during COVID. Because people are so distanced now, we don't know what is going on in people's lives, we don't see each other at events. We don't gather.

And when someone like Rosemarie Bowick dies, we don't have the same chance to grieve collectively, to let her family, and her husband, know that she was a treasured member of our community.

It's one of the hidden costs of the pandemic, that will only be fully appreciated when our communities are fully reborn, hopefully later this year.