The Short Life of a Thoroughly Post-Modern Canadian Woman

A ‘defender of the weak’, she had a strong, nurturing way about her. She helped others as a social worker and a Wiccan priestess.

Heather Arlene Carr was born on Sept.6, 1974, in Kamloops, B.C. For her mother, Judy, it was a long, difficult birth, one that her father, Jack, a trucker, missed because of work. She was the first of four children and, along with her sisters, Sheri and Stacey, she doted on her younger brother, David. From an early age, Heather had a strong, nurturing way about her. She referred to her siblings as “the kids,” says Judy. “She was my little helper.”

Heather, like her father, was an avid reader. Bursting with imagination, she often read or made up stories for her brother and sisters. Fantasies and ghost stories were favourite subjects. In 1982, the Carrs moved to Tumbler Ridge, B.C., where Jack got work at a grocery store. Heather was a pudgy girl, with coke-bottle glasses, and different. Though fearless, she was still sometimes picked on. She buried her pain, says her mom, but she always noticed it in others: “She was a defender of the weak her whole life,” says Judy. She brought home anybody who was having a problem. Their house, says sister Sheri, was a revolving door “of the wounded and hurt.”  (more...)

Heather Arlene Carr, 1974-2015