Leslie Hall PINDER

LESLIE HALL PINDER September 21, 1948 - June 12, 2021 ...I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonder If I have made of my life something particular, and real... I don't want to end up simply having visited this world. (By Mary Oliver, 'When Death Comes') All who knew her would agree that Leslie did not simply visit this world. She changed it. A huge hole has been left in our hearts and in the universe by our lover, friend, sister, auntie, advisor, adventurer, writer, lawyer. Leslie suffered a stroke on Saltspring Island and was helicoptered to Victoria General Hospital where a hemorrhage ended her life. She went peacefully surrounded by her beloved and three of her five siblings. Predeceased by her father, Dr. Ray Hall; her adoptive father, Ross Pinder; her mother, Margaret (née Rathwell) Pinder. Survived by her life partner, Catherine Wedge; her siblings, Jeff, Janet, Terri, Doug, and Paul; her 12 nieces and nephews; and her nine great-nieces and nephews. Leslie was born in Elrose, Saskatchewan, lived in Toronto for three years while her father was at the University of Toronto, and then spent the rest of her youth in Saskatoon. She was senior pin of Walter Murray High School, active in basketball, speed skating and was Saskatchewan junior golf champion in 1965. Leslie earned a B.A. in English literature from the University of Saskatchewan and Dalhousie University in 1968. She worked as a court recorder while pursuing legal studies, obtaining her LL.B. from the University of British Columbia in 1976. Her association with First Nations peoples began in 1978 when she started working for the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs as in-house legal counsel. At that time Aboriginal title was the "right which dare not speak its name." With their First Nations' clients, the firm of Mandell Pinder & Ostrove made ground breaking changes and Leslie continued to fight for First Nations after she "retired" in 2005 to pursue writing full-time. See www.mandellpinder.com/our-story for more history. When Leslie was 12 years old a teacher encouraged her to write. Her first short story was broadcast on CBC Radio when she was 19 and she has published poetry, short stories, essays, novels, stage plays, and an opera. She has merged her fiction with her legal knowledge, producing novels that are centred in her characters' difficult and corrupting struggle with the truth as defined by the law. She published four novels: Under the House, Bring Me One of Everything, The Indulgence, and On Double Tracks, which was short-listed for a 1990 Governor-General's Award, the highest literary award in Canada. You can find out more about her writing and her life at lesliehallpinder.com. Leslie had an incredibly brilliant mind, a fearless and endless imagination, a profound curiosity about everyone and everything around her, and boundless love and devotion to those close to her. She has deeply touched so many people in her hugely diverse life and she will be missed. Catherine and Leslie's siblings would like to thank the attending neurologist, Dr. A. MacLellan and the amazing nursing staff at Victoria General Hospital who gave Leslie such loving care and did everything in their power to make her passing a peaceful one.