Rachelle and I were chuckling away while we sat across from Mom’s bed at Squamish General Hospital.
She was dying, and I hope she didn’t take offence and was laughing with us. Rachelle was a family friend and had worked with Mom at Billie’s Bouquet, the flower shop that Mom opened in the 1970s.
Mom took a lot of care with the shop window displays, Rachelle recalled. One Easter, she’d borrowed a rabbit, and they’d gotten a chicken with chicks and set them up in the window for the kids.
The next morning, they were in shock. The rabbit with a swollen belly was lying on its back. The chicks had gotten loose and were peeping and scooting all about. The place was in total disarray. Mom and Rachelle tried to corral the chicks and ended up rolling on the floor in laughter.
But let’s go back a bit.
Mom had been recuperating from a nasty divorce from my Dad when she met Bill Kibsey in the late 60s. He’d been an engineer in the navy and had been all over the world. She’d been impressed.
When he got a job at BC Rail in Squamish, he asked, “Are you coming?”
We were living in Hamilton, Ontario, at the time. My sister Barbara and I encouraged her to go. We saw it as her chance for a better life. And we were right.
Mom moved to Squamish and married Bill. She took a floral design course and opened Billie’s Bouquet in 1971.
Kibsey loved to golf, and with Mom, it became another passion when they joined the Squamish Valley Golf Club.
Barbara and I had moved to Toronto. We would fly to Squamish to visit Mom when we could, and she would put us to work at the shop.
One Christmas, she had us wrapping foil and ribbons around poinsettias. She’d ordered a couple of hundred of them. The floor was covered. We thought there was no way Mom would sell all of them. We were astonished at how quickly they were snapped up.
In those days, Mom — who was born Mildred Barr, but folks called her Billie — was the only florist in town. If anyone died, graduated or got engaged, Mom got busy, bravely driving the treacherous, old highway into Vancouver to get fresh flowers and supplies. As a perfectionist, she spent many all-nighters making things just right for others’ special occasions.
She had a big heart, but there were always folks who took advantage. There was one fellow, she laughed, who would buy flowers, and then when they eventually wilted, as flowers sadly do, he’d return them demanding a replacement or his money back.
She did it reluctantly a few times before saying no. She’d say, “The florist is always the last person paid.”
Kibsey died in 1984. Mom’s loving encryption on his grave was: “To sail the seas of another place. Thy trials ended. Thy rest is won.”
Mom wasn’t just a florist.
During the war, she’d worked in munitions at Westinghouse. She’d been one of the Bomb Girls. There was even a television series (2012 to 2014) about them.
After the war, she stayed in electronics, eventually becoming a supervisor.
Billie was one of five women in electronics chosen to help in the construction of a guided missile that was to be installed under the wing of the Avro Arrow plane before it was scrapped in 1959.
After selling the shop in 2001, Mom took pride that future owners carried on the tradition that plants and flowers are a way of sharing love. Billie kept up her golf game.
She was an extra when the film companies came to Squamish for over a dozen films, including Free Willie 3. She passed away in 2015.
I’m sure my Mom, Billie, isn’t the only person to blossom in Squamish and won’t be the last.
Melody Wales is a long-time columnist, writer and Squamish resident.
