Remembering David House
Sadly, David House passed away on April 24th 2024, at Vancouver General Hospital. He had been suffering with a recurring bout of Leukemia and other cancer related symptoms since the latter part of 2023. We spent quite some time over that period in and out of hospital where I learnt more about David’s past, more than when I first met him.
David grew up in Ontario and what I did learn in our hospital visits, was when at university, he actually got involved in the University Film Club. That explained why he had such a love for film. He was also a prolific reader, and loved fishing while living in Powell River, where he was for a number of years. A person with varied talents he drove courier for some time, had a comic and card trading store, and was very organized from his younger years as a Scout Canada participant.
David was also an accomplished bridge player participating in on-line competitions with a regular group, often winning or getting to the finals.
David loved food and good restaurants and did many food tastings sometimes accompanying Don, his brother, who organized food events in Vancouver and Canada.
I met David at VIFF in 2016 during the Vancouver International Festival. We both had a great love for film, although David had a wider capacity for many genres, whereas, I had a narrower focus on mainly Foreign / International films (features and some documentaries) . We both also enjoyed many North American documentaries
I was happy to have David join as a board member of our society in 2018, and remained on the board until his passing. I also introduced David to the BC Leo Awards where he juried for a number of years as did I..
David also volunteered with VIFF and Cinematheque for a considerable number of years, and was on the selection committee for the VIFF International Film Festival for as many years, watching more than a 100 films each year. He previewed a similar amount of films for DOXA, Spark Animation, and other smaller festivals such as New West Film Festival, and one or two Festival in the U.S.
We spoke almost every day, discussing movies and Wordle, sharing an IPA, and other beers, and some good food. David had many friends in the film world, bridge and poker world, and other volunteers that he worked with. I also learnt more about his family as time went on and met some of his family living in Vancouver at the hospital visits.
I was fortunate to be by his bedside in the morning, before he passed away that same evening.
VIFF has kindly named a seat for David. It is in the Vancity Theatre on the 1st seat in the 3rd row on the right side, facing the screen, where he often sat while volunteering or after a shift.
We are hoping to celebrate his life at VIFF sometime in the near future.
I miss David!
I sometimes sit next to that seat in the 3rd row which I used to do, when we were both at the theatre.
