May 1, 1943–April 13, 2026
From Sharolyn Lee Bolton
Ken didn’t want an obituary so I hereby officially state that this is not an obituary. Should he wish to argue, he knows where to find me.
One of five children, Ken was born in Quebec and began his lifelong travels around Canada, thanks to the successful career of his Anglican priest father. His wandering spirit and his commitment to writing and politics, as well as his passion for performing, followed (or perhaps pushed) him through a life spent in towns and cities from sea to sea to sea. His adventures included deep friendships, marriages and five children. Those stories are not mine to tell.
After many Yukon years, he followed a woman (me) to live “somewhere east of Whitehorse” (Saint John) where I became the last of the Mrs. Ken Boltons. (Were he here, Ken would know the correct way to pluralize that.)
We later moved to Peterborough, Ontario, and this seems like the moment to thank the folks at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Peterborough Regional Hospital; and Northland Pointe Care Home, for all their help over these last few years. Nor would Ken want me to miss the chance to extol the virtues of socialized health care.
If we accept Christopher Hitchens’ assertion that “the one unforgivable sin is to be boring,” there are grounds to propose Ken for sainthood. His wicked sense of humour and endless appetite for adventure and conversation meant that things were always interesting around him. He believed deeply in the possibility of a better future and in the exciting opportunity that was always just around the corner.
Across this country, Ken Bolton touched a great many lives. It may come as a surprise to some that Ken was actually fond of musicals, and although we never got to see Wicked, I think he would have understood that I am left remembering him with this lyric, “Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better? Because I knew you. I have been changed for good.”
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Dear Rodney,
Back in the day, in the mid-90s when the Yukon was still small enough where you knew everyone who wanted to be known, I was a columnist with the Yukon News.
My editor gleefully reported one day (or for what passes as “gleeful” for Peter Lesniak) that I was sharing a duplex with another columnist: Rodney.
Granger was a long way from Dingwell’s Pond. And if Rodney was as meticulous with landscaping as he was with the English language, I just knew I would be mowing the entire lawn … being careful to mow around the wrecked cars and other such detritus of a rural P.E.I. implant.
Who I found, instead, was Ken Bolton. He was charismatic. He was whip smart. He was gracious. And he was surprisingly quiet, as only an actor off the stage, recharging his batteries, can be.
He was better than “interesting” … he was “interested.”
Two decades later, when I edited What’s Up Yukon, Ken told me Rodney needed a new pen pal. I gladly added him to the team, but I fretted how I would ever manage to apply the CP Style Book to such free-style folksy prose.
But it was a joy. Behind those tortured sentence structures and creative spelling was a writer communicating on a different level. The humour and the humanity crept up on the reader and was a pleasant surprise. Every. Time.
It was the finest rendering of the art of satire.
As we watched Rodney spin out over some small dilemma, we were reminded that our own dilemmas could look just as silly and manageable.
In 2006, Ken gave me the best laugh ever: he was performing at The Guild in the play A Life In The Theatre. His character, Robert, was reading a bad review, on stage, in What’s Up Yukon.
His character grumbled.
It was actually a good review (of course it was). You see, David Mamet’s play was all about art for art’s sake. Meanwhile, Ken was turning “art imitates life” upside down.
Squint hard enough, cock your head just so, and you can see the same genius of Rodney at work.
Ken was so immersed in community, he could use Rodney to lovingly explore from the inside. Inside from a place that is warm and understanding.
Writing this tribute to Ken Bolton, I realize I am referencing myself too much. But it is easy to be selfish when we lose someone who was bigger than ourselves in all of the most important ways.
My condolences to Ken’s loved ones. And condolences to all who read his words and discerned the poignancy and the grace of Rodney’s community. That would be all of us.
Yer pal,
Mister Ed
TAG: Darrell Hookey was the first editor of What’s Up Yukon.
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HED: Ken with a K
Let’s examine the letter K … A multi-talented letter, it finds utility with all manner of other letters in the alphabet.
It can simply stand by itself and support vowels seeking their harder form. It can help us like something, jump in the lake or spring a leak. The letter K helps those vowels sound the way they want to sound.
Add a C before it and it finds itself a hard-nosed consonant that adds an edge to words like crack, lack or back.
But then you can place K before N and the letter takes a supportive, almost invisible role to add grandeur to words like knowledge, knight or knave, but keeps its tough reputation for not backing down with words like knee or knife.
And those two combinations together provide K a real rough-and-tumble nature with words like knuckle, knock and knick.
I bring this up, because K also served as the first letter for Ken. And long-time editor and writer Ken Bolton shared many of those same qualities, supporting so many writers for What’s Up Yukon and adjusting his role to help them be what they wanted to be.
So that begs the question: How does one bring that together to speak of Ken? I think the word itself speaks volumes.
Ken (n.): one’s range of knowledge or sight. Like the letter K, there was much within Ken’s ken.
He could play different roles—hard-edged editor, pushing for better product; a rascal with a wry sense of humour; and thoughtful, accomplished writer able to provide sage advice. And that doesn’t even delve into his years of political work where he served as a shrewd architect of many speeches, press releases and opinion editorials—all content that helped move the public consciousness on one issue or another.
I truly enjoyed working with Ken during my time as editor of What’s Up Yukon. He was happy to provide advice when asked, but otherwise relished in discovering what creative direction each editor chose to take the magazine. (And never shy to share a typo or two that you published!) He truly was invested in What’s Up Yukon’s success and the success of the people looking to publish it each week.
There was not much outside his ken, and we may not see such an individual as Ken Bolton grace the Yukon writing scene for a long time.
He will be remembered by those who had the benefit of working with him.
—Danny Macdonald
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HED: A rich soul
I met Ken Bolton many years ago and he was teaching a new generation of aboriginal journalists how to tell their stories. Through a long life he continued to be a storyteller, a comic and an actor, but I will always remember him as a good friend. We sometimes differed and argued. We mostly laughed. He was kind of a quixotic person; I don’t know what exactly he was trying to find. But he seems to have enriched the lives of everyone he met along the way. I guess all I can say is I feel lucky for the times we spent together, and the world is poorer for the loss of a rich soul.
—Mike Linder
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HED: That’s writing
Nothing bores me more than reading about gardening, but I read every bloody word of Ken’s article describing his fall ritual of storing his garden tools in hibernation for the winter. I hung on every word as he filled up a paragraph or two describing how he hangs up a rake. That’s writing.
—Carey Marshall
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HED: What I learned from Ken
Even before becoming a WUY contributor, I read every issue I could get my hands on. Ken Bolton’s articles were very interesting to me. I read new colloquial phrases, which I had to digest and then find out if there was a similar German-language phrase. Ken was a thinker, writing lovely sentences, being able to laugh at himself and come up with ideas of cool photos (drinking red wine out of a half-smashed glass?). I’ve learned quite a few things, for example what crow stew is! My condolences go out to his family and friends.
—Sonja Seeber, Yukon trapper
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HED: Honouring a passionate editor
Ken … I remember reading his columns when he was editor of What’s Up Yukon and thinking, This guy really knows his stuff. And he really did. Then I finally had the opportunity to have a little email exchange with him about em dashes. It was amicable and professional. I knew then how passionate he was about editing. I knew then that writers were important to him, and readers … and, of course, the paper (all equally important). I liked him instantly.
From one editor to another: Thank you, Ken, for challenging and inspiring us.
My sincere condolences to Ken’s family and friends.
—Josephine Holmes
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