TOM BARRETT

(January 20, 1954 - September 15, 2025) Tom passed away peacefully, at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, BC, with his beloved wife, Fiona McQuarrie, holding his hand. Thomas Edward Barrett was born in Victoria, BC, the only child of his loving parents, Ted (also Thomas Edward) and Joan (née White). In 1959, the Barretts moved to Vancouver, where Tom attended Captain Cook Elementary and Killarney Secondary School. At Killarney, he played tuba in the school band, and played league hockey at Killarney Community Centre. After graduating from high school, he headed for Toronto, where he eventually decided that he wanted to do something other than working on an assembly line in an antifreeze factory. He had seen the movie The Front Page in Grade Ten, and that made him think that journalism might be interesting. He signed up for the journalism program at Humber College, where, he recalled, in one of his courses, he was the only student still enrolled at the end of the term. After two semesters at Humber, Tom returned to Vancouver and completed his journalism diploma at Langara College. In 1974, he was hired as a reporter at The Vancouver Sun. During his nearly three decades at the Sun, Tom specialized in political reporting, spending several years in the press gallery at the BC Legislature. He covered numerous federal, provincial, and municipal elections, following candidates on the campaign trail, doing election night coverage on deadline, and writing insightful analyses. Tom was also a feature writer and a television, film, and culture writer at the Sun. His newsroom nickname was "The Doctor" because of his alleged resemblance to Steven (Doc) Kupka of the band Tower of Power. Although Tom was always modest about his work, he was highly respected by his colleagues at the Sun and in the media for his ability to find and follow a story, his outstanding writing skills, his kindness and gentle spirit, and his dry but always on the mark sense of humour. He was serious about the craft of journalism, but he also had a lot of fun doing it. He met Fiona while they both worked at the Sun, and they were married in 1987. They commuted between Edmonton and Vancouver during her doctoral studies, and then lived in Prince Edward Island for three years. When Fiona accepted a job in the Fraser Valley and they returned to the Lower Mainland, they were faced with the question of where to live when their workplaces were nearly 80 kilometers apart. With his usual careful attention to detail, Tom sat down with a map, stretched a piece of string between the locations of their respective workplaces, and stuck a pin in the middle of the string. That was how they ended up in the Maillardville neighbourhood of Coquitlam. Tom took a buyout from the Sun in 2002. He became one of the first contributors to the online news site The Tyee and taught in the journalism program at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. He also completed a Bachelor of Professional Arts in Communication Studies at Athabasca University, graduating "with great distinction" in 2007. In the last ten years, he experienced physical challenges that restricted his mobility and his opportunities to socialize. Frustratingly, these limitations also made it difficult for him to do the kind of research and writing he loved. But he remained positive and had made significant progress toward better health. Tom was a thoughtful and affectionate man. He loved comics, movies, baseball, history, art, architecture, and music. He had an endless sense of curiosity. He was an enthusiastic reader, and never stopped trying to improve his own writing. He always had a notebook by his side to write down quotes that he particularly liked, or words that intrigued him. He was a loyal friend. He was, and is, deeply loved. Tom leaves his wife, Fiona; his mother-in-law, Carol McQuarrie; his brother-in-law, Michael McQuarrie; his cousins, Grace Garrison, and Marg and Don Jacobson; and friends all around the world. Many thanks to the BC Ambulance Service and the dedicated staff of the cardiac surgery ICU unit at Royal Columbian Hospital, for their compassionate and respectful care of Tom. Memorial donations may be made to the Myasthenia Gravis Association of BC (https://myasthenia-gravis.ca). "It's a beautiful world, P.K. Purvis." - P.G. Wodehouse