Twyla Roscovich will be remembered as a powerful storyteller, filmmaker and defender of B.C.’s wild coast as well as a loving person, say her family and friends.
Roscovich died last week at the age of 38. She was reported missing on Sept. 8 when she didn’t return home to Sointula from a medical appointment in Nanaimo. Her body was found on Sept. 15 in Campbell River after an extensive search by police and community members.
Her family did not comment on how she died, but said there was no foul play.
Roscovich was born in Whitehorse, Yukon, and moved with her family to Vancouver Island in 1984. Her father, Glen Roscovich, was studying aquaculture and later worked on fish farms.
Roscovich’s step-sister Leni Goggins said it was a running family joke that her father was a fish farmer and she became an anti-fish farm activist.
“He came around to her side after many, many years,” said Goggins, who described Roscovich as a soul sister.
Goggins has set up a fundraising campaign to support Roscovich’s four-year-old daughter, Ruby Ross, who lives with her father, Paul Ross, in Sointula. The fund has raised about $43,000. She said the money will be held in trust until Ruby is older.
“She is a happy, intelligent and imaginative little one who looks just like her mom,” Goggins said.
Roscovich discovered her passion for filmmaking as a teenager during a weeklong workshop at the Gulf Islands Film and Television School on Galiano Island.
Her dad, Glen Roscovich, said she excelled beyond his wildest dreams and was largely self-taught. He recalled how she won a national film award, which led to a stint at the OrcaLab research centre on Hanson Island and shooting footage for the BBC.
“How she switched with such deadly earnestness to mastering her craft was really quite astonishing to me,” he said. “From this kinda punk girl, typical annoying teenager to this utterly focused person on this whole new venture. That impressed the hell out of me.”
It was at the OrcaLab that Roscovich met environmentalist and fish farm opponent Alexandra Morton. The pair became close friends and collaborated on the 2013 documentary Salmon Confidential.
“She was incredibly young to be doing what she was doing. Later I realized her style was to always be ahead of the curve,” said Morton from a boat at an ongoing fish farm protest near Alert Bay.
“Twyla was a very good filmmaker. She was aggressive at going after the story, but portrayed things with a sense of fairness and dignity.
“She was one of the few people I could really talk to about these issues, not to complain, but [about] how to fix things,” Morton said. “She used to say to me: ‘We are standing on a dying planet. There’s no time to waste.’ ”
Morton said Roscovich was incredibly brave, describing her camping alone once with a fever while filming wolves. “When she came to, there were wolf tracks around her tent,” she said.
Roscovich had no problem diving under fish farms at night and even survived a helicopter crash. “She was fearless — until she had her daughter and became more careful,” Morton said.
She last saw Roscovich a few days before she went missing. Morton borrowed her car to run home for a few items.
“She seemed good,” Morton said. She expressed some concern that Roscovich was tree-planting to support her daughter instead of making films. “We were talking about working on something together in the fall.”
Roscovich is survived by father Glen Roscovich, mother Lynn Zaharuk, brother Adam Roscovich and daughter Ruby Ross.
A memorial service will be held in Campbell River in the coming weeks.
