Cultural ambassador, artist, art historian, translator, host, friend. Born March 24, 1959, in Montreal. Died April 21 in Montreal of ovarian cancer, aged 51.
Not long before she died, Kathleen Fleming was mulling for her tombstone the words of Rainer Maria Rilke, quoted by Hugh MacLennan in Two Solitudes, his lament for the divide between French and English Canada: "Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other." It was an apt epitaph for a Quebec-born woman who grew up in London, Ont., only to later make a life in downtown Montreal as an English ambassador for the French language.
Soon after graduating in art history from Queen's University in 1981, Kathleen landed an internship at Guggenheim Venice. At first turned down for the job, she called to ask why - and was told the gallery would find room for anyone with the courage to make such an inquiry. Among her duties, she took a daily toothbrush to pigeon droppings on the priceless outdoor artworks. The Venice gig became a blueprint for Kathleen's career: equal parts talent, persistence and elbow grease, channelled into broadening her cultural horizons.
After pursuing a degree at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Kathleen moved to Montreal. There, she met a handful of Nunavut-based videographers who had been documenting and dramatizing Northern stories. Zacharias Kunuk recalls how Kathleen had trouble sleeping under the midnight sun during subsequent visits to Igloolik, and how she provided him a couch on his trips to Montreal for two decades. "I called her my Qallunaat Sister - my Southern Sister," he says.
Founding her own company in 1995, Kathleen translated exhibition catalogues for art galleries across North America and created subtitles for dozens of filmmakers. "She loved conveying day-to-day French to English audiences," director Bernard Émond says, "to reveal not just the words but the spirit of a film."
Her final translation, for Catherine Martin's Trois temps après la mort d'Anna, will screen in tribute to Kathleen this Sunday at Montreal's Festival du nouveau cinéma. When Catherine e-mailed her while shooting that film in Kamouraska, Que., in 2009, Kathleen, then undergoing chemotherapy, e-mailed back: "Presumably this isn't a remake of the Claude Jutra film [1973's Kamouraska, starring Geneviève Bujold]that made all the little kids in Ontario want to drop everything and move to cool Quebec, where they have horses and French and beautiful, intense women to emulate. Well, one little kid, at least. Kind of an oddball, I suppose. Now even odder, with a billiard-ball head."
All her friends will remember how Kathleen greeted news of any of our successes with a smiling "No way, man!" and preferred flashing an insouciant peace symbol to saying goodbye. Though she had done her bit to bridge the two solitudes, she ultimately reckoned Rilke's sentiments a bit grand. "Fini les solitudes" reads her tombstone's simple plea. Enough with the solitudes.
By Victor Dwyer, Kathleen's friend.