Eve Dove Gagnon

Eve Dove Gagnon of Sorrento, BC, died on September 10 in Kamloops, just three weeks after her 81st birthday.  An American by birth, she became a Canadian citizen at age 79.

In her last days Eve’s close friends visited her in her hospital room to say their good-byes.   I was there, too, her big sister Jane, the person who has known Eve the longest — I was in the New York City hospital the day Eve was born. I still recall a nurse placing her in my 4-year-old arms.  At the end of a long life, Eve leaves behind loving friends and family who will miss her terribly.

A person is defined by the friends they earn. Eve’s friends are independent, free-spirited, creative women, artists and entrepreneurs like her.  There is the book-binder; the needle-worker; the painter; the graphic artist; the driver of 65-ton trucks in the Yukon; the maker of the tastiest line of jams you ever had.  Eve fit this eclectic, unconventional group perfectly. 

As an artist herself, Eve’s talent showed early.  Our mother said she was born with a crayon in her mouth.  As a teenager, she studied at Pratt Institute (where she later taught), at the New York High School of Art and Design, and at Emerson College in Boston where she studied theater arts, lighting, and scene and costume design.  She worked on building sets for the renowned New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park.

After Emerson, in New York City, working for different companies, she designed carpets, wallpaper, fabrics, and clothes, including for off-Broadway shows.   She enrolled in the Auditore School of Fashion Design in New York City to study pattern making, which taught the knowledge and speed she needed.  When she left, she could design and manufacture a man’s suit.

The next years were filled with making clothes, from custom designs for individuals to filling orders by the gross from boutiques.   A stint in Los Angeles earned her a reputation for fancy and sexy lace blouses.  

In early 1975 she dreamed she should move to Aspen and open a store.  She called Triple A and asked where Aspen was.  They told her in Colorado.  Soon after she opened a shop with her new name, legally changed to “Eve Dove.”  It became known as the place to go for something different.  She sold new things and old, from doilies to a white fox stole or a purple velvet dress, from custom wedding dresses to clothes that pleased John Denver.  One friend called her a clothesaholic.

A few years later she found herself in Texas, where she met Paul Gagnon, a fellow vendor at a Renaissance Fair. They fell in love and married.  Paul was Canadian, so they moved to British Columbia, where she applied her growing talent to jewelry making.  Her speciality was making beads, gorgeous kaleidoscopic swirls of colored glass, using material from Murano.  Eve’s beads dazzled in sought-after earrings, bracelets, and necklaces.

Eve and Paul together bought and sold art objects and small antiques, with a specialty in fine jewelry, much of which Eve made. For more than three decades they were a fixture on a circuit of shows in BC and Alberta that attracted thousands of customers, as many as 15 shows a year. Both Eve and Paul had a sure eye for what an art object was worth. Their refined taste brought them repeat customers from all over western Canada.

Eventually, with her advanced years and after Paul died, Eve’s creative life became home-centered. The Covid pandemic pretty much killed the show circuit. Well along in life, she taught herself to take professional-level photos of her collected treasures. She absorbed the Internet and kept selling through the shopping website Ruby Lane.

Eve cared about the buyers of her custom clothes and tried to tailor what she charged to the customer’s pocketbook. She would sew a wedding dress for a bride-to-be with painstaking care, a beautiful garment meticulously designed and sewn for days, yet she could never charge what it was actually worth. She loved to be a hostess at home, setting a table with delicious food, always attractively presented. At Christmas she showered her cousins in the States and their children with dozens of presents, all gorgeously wrapped with Eve’s touch. 

In the last couple of years, Eve worked for the Chase Food Bank.  She cooked, she served, she unloaded trucks. Before Christmas, she shopped for presents for 150 families. She was such a diligent presence at the Pantry that she was soon serving on its board.  Eve loved this volunteer work and it kept her going. It taught her about the struggles of local families. She valued the chance to help them.

Eve enriched our lives with love. She left us with art that we wear and with art that decorates our homes. Her presence will remain with us.