Fierce, feisty, funny: Wendi Smallwood lived a large and too-short life

Wendi Smallwood died earlier this week after a long and (let’s be frank) brutal battle with cancer. She fought it with vigour, stamping on it, and often with humour. Her Facebook posts found the joy of life, even when it was under siege.

In the days since, my social media feed has been filled with anecdotes and tributes to a powerful, talented actor, and a creative soul who made an impact off the stage, too. We knew it was coming. Earlier this month, Wendi was too sick to attend her 64th birthday party at the Ship in downtown St. John’s, so the crowd called her on the phone and wished her a happy birthday. It was also a goodbye.

I have a lot of memories of Wendi through the years, and they often involve joy. Here’s one of them.

At some point in the 1982-83 university year, Wendi bopped into the Muse office, already animated and in zesty mood. “Oooh,” she cried out, hearing a song playing on the CHMR feed in the office. “Turn it up!” The song was Peter Gabriel’s Shock the Monkey, and in seconds she was dancing about the office, hopping from one leg to another. For the next couple of minutes, the office (which was never that dour) was filled with unbridled happiness.

Wendi had that effect, and that power.

This was the period when I met her. She was already a stalwart at “da Muse” — I recall her saying we should permanently change the flag on the front page each week — not to mention the ignition behind MUN Drama. She starred in productions, and helped make the summer Shakespeare series of the era (often directed by Gordon Jones) an unmissable event each year. They were so good.

My wife, Martha Muzychka, was much closer to Wendi then and through the years. It was through Martha that I often got to see her.

This is what Martha posted on Tuesday, which — like every June 16 — was Bloomsday, an opportunity to honour Ulysses, its author James Joyce and characters like Molly Bloom:

I can’t help but think of Wendi Smallwood today on Bloomsday and this iconic ending quote from James Joyce’s Ulysses: “I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

Wendi said yes to life in so many ways. Ever since I met her, in 1979, she lived large on her terms. Her laugh was infectious and impossible, given her tiny frame; her wit ribald and sharp. Wendi did not suffer fools gladly but she was the kindest soul you could meet. She was a spectacular actress who owned the stage and shared it too. She was a financial whiz and manager, working for multiple non-profits over the years as their book-keeper, grant writer and program logistics specialist.

Martha and Wendi liked to meet up each year for a meal with their longtime friends Jean Hewson and Sandra Hamelmann. In a Facebook post, Jean wrote that the four of them “would always go out for a ‘birthday’ lunch – generally in the fall even though our birthdays were all at different points in the year. We’d catch up and state with conviction that we would see each other more frequently. Sometimes we were able to do that, other times we didn’t. I am grateful for all the times we did manage to have together.”

Jean also wrote this great description that I think gets to Wendi’s wonderful ability to reconnect, no matter the gap between meetings.

She was here, she was gone, she came back, she’d phone, we wouldn’t hear from each other for long stretches…then we’d have a flurry of reunions. Wendi had a way of being able to instantly reconnect with a person and pick up the relationship right where it left off.

We saw Wendi — who described herself on Facebook as a “number-crunching-wannabe-tutu wearer who lives in St. John’s where the sun struggles to shine” — at different times and circumstances. For a while, she was roommates with Dave Roe in a big house on Freshwater Road.

In 2011 (I think I have the year right), Dave took this photo of Wendi when she starred in a production of Margaret Edson’s one-act play Wit (also known as W;t) at the LSPU Hall. It’s unnerving to realize 15 years later the performance was about a professor dying of cancer.

Dave died in 2017, of an apparent heart attack. Goodness, all these losses. They add up, don’t they.

I last saw Wendi in April, when I dropped off a curry (vegetarian, of course) I had made for her. Martha made some muffins. Wendi was very weak and was struggling to walk, and I could not help but see that her pallor had changed. There was not a stain of self-pity; instead, she cracked a joke as we chatted at her apartment door.

She also had something for me: the radio you see here.

It had belonged to Gordon and Helen Jones, and she wanted me to have it. Gordon and Helen were a big part of our lives, as professors and mentors. Gordon read at Martha’s father’s funeral. They attended our wedding. I think they were the first “grown-ups” we invited to our little apartment by Bannerman Park.

Earlier this year, I wrote a post about radio, including a fruitless search I made years ago for a nice desktop radio. Years later, I honestly did not need another radio, but I could not say no to Wendi’s generous offer. We lost Helen first and then Gordon, and now Wendi. I’m glad I took it home, and yes, I love it. I learned later from actor-director-force of nature Ruth Lawrence that Wendi had been finding homes for Gordon and Helen’s things.

Above is a photo I took for the Muse of Wendi in costume (but not quite in character), when she was in MUN Drama’s production of Measure for Measure. The screengrab comes from the book Brave New Worlds: Shakespeare in Newfoundland and Labrador, edited by Robert Ormsby. Wendi’s role in and contributions to the local Shakespeare tradition are documented in this book, which is online here. In 2017, Wendi got in touch to arrange permission to use the photo in an exhibit that Robert was working on with Danielle Irvine. I of course said yes.

Wendi went on to have a rich, vibrant and long acting career. Her colleagues have been paying tribute on Facebook to her talent, and to her powerhouse personality. The adjectives about her life, her personality, her talent are remarkable: “fierce,” “fearless,” “feisty,” “hilarious,” “bad-ass” … it’s a long, long list, and all of them so true.

We loved you, Wendi, very much.

I’m not sure I’ll listen to Shock the Monkey now without thinking of Wendi Smallwood: that bottomless laugh, that buzzing energy, the best of life, the flower of the mountain.