Friends and family of the late Cathy Cross are happy that her legacy will live on in the Alberni Valley through a new bursary fund for graduating students.
Beth Currie of the Alberni Valley Community School Society recently presented a cheque for $50,000 to the Alberni Valley Community Foundation to establish a bursary fund in memory of the late Cathy Cross. This will fund two annual bursaries for students graduating from Alberni District Secondary School (ADSS) and Eighth Avenue Learning Centre.
Cathy Cross was born in Port Alberni on Oct. 4, 1955 and spent most of her life in the Alberni Valley. Throughout her daughters' school years, she was a member of various PACs and she started working as the Community School Coordinator in the late '90s. She stayed with the Community School through its moves from Redford School to Alberni Elementary School to its current home at the ADSS Wellness Centre (tiicmis).
In more than 25 years of coordinating the Community School, Cross raised nearly $1 million that went to programs helping families in the Alberni Valley.
The Alberni Valley Community School Society is a non-profit organization that runs through schools and into communities. It brings people together to help define services that are needed for families in the community, then finds a way to help access or operate those services.
Julie Rushton, another member of the Community School Society, says she first met Cross in 2005.
"I walked into [Cathy's] office, looked at her wall and immediately knew I had a friend," said Rushton. "Everything about Cathy was really about nurturing her community."
Rushton said Cross had a knack for identifying where gaps existed in community services and finding solutions for those gaps — whether that was providing a washer and dryer at the school for parents to use, or starting after school programs for students who needed a little extra time to catch up.
"She built relationships with everyone she came into contact with," said Rushton. "She wanted to know about the person and learn their story. She was really a community developer to her core, whether she was shopping at Walmart or sitting at her desk."
Cross would adjust her schedule and her life to the needs of the community, explained Currie — even working evenings at Redford School to make sure the computer room would stay open for students who didn't have computers at home.
"She instilled a sense of belonging," said Currie.
This ability to connect with people extended to students at all of the schools she worked at, said Rushton. The cupboard in her office was always "crammed full" of supplies, whether it was snacks, menstrual products, clothes or educational tools.
"Kids in school knew that Cathy Cross was that person you could go to for anything," Rushton said. "Kids would go down the hall to visit her for a snack, for a prom dress or if they simply wanted to say hello. She was a beacon of light in the school for kids because she met them where they were at."
Another example of Cross's dedication to her community comes with the Port Alberni Backpack Program. The Backpack Program was started as a way to provide school families with food over the weekend, and Cross looked after the group's finances for more than a decade. Although the program normally runs from September to June, it was expanded to the summer months during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the challenges families were facing with temporary job losses.
"When [COVID-19] started to get bad, we found ourselves wondering what are these kids going to do without school," explained Currie. "Within three hours of the schools being closed, Cathy had a fully developed proposal to make sure students would be fed for the rest of the year. She saw that was the gap that was needed to get food to kids."
Cross died on Nov. 6, 2023 at the age of 68 from an unexpected brain aneurysm. After her death, other members of the Alberni Valley Community School Society made the difficult decision to dissolve the society.
"The hole she left was so great," said Currie. "She was the glue that held all those support structures in place."
But the non-profit still had grant money left that needed to be spent. Members eventually came up with the idea of forming a bursary fund, which will help students in Port Alberni attend post-secondary education.
"It was coming up on the season for bursaries, so it was suggested that's what we should do," said Currie. "We talked to Cathy's family, and they agreed that would be a great way to honour her. We made a bursary fund of $50,000 and connected with the Alberni Valley Community Foundation to distribute it. It all just came together."
The first-ever Cathy Cross Memorial Bursary was handed out in 2024 to ADSS graduate Madison Warren. Going forward, students from both ADSS and Eighth Avenue Learning Centre will receive bursaries each year.
"Cathy would have adored this idea," said Rushton. "She really was a beacon of light in a community that was looking for the light."
"I hope this bursary can fill a gap again," Currie added. "By doing that, it's Cathy's legacy."
Anyone who would like to donate to Cross’s fund can do so through the Alberni Valley Community Foundation at www.albernifoundation.ca.