Pegeen Brennan died peacefully on Sept. 17 at home, surrounded by family.  She was 84 years old.  Born in Ashcroft, B.C., she lived her early years in the Cariboo, where her father was a cowboy on the Gang Ranch.  The family lived in a tiny log cabin in remote sagebrush and timber country, where she began her lifelong love of horses.  At age seven, her family moved to the Brennan grandparent’s farm in Orillia, Ontario, but after her mother died tragically of polio she and her three sisters were brought up by aunts and uncles.  In her late teens she returned to B.C., to Fernie, where her father was a coal miner.  She married there, but later divorced, moved to Vancouver, and attended UBC.  She wrote poetry and novels, and became a Senior Instructor in the English Department at UBC, where she met her best friend and husband, Lee Whitehead.  She loved especially the years she spent teaching in the interdisciplinary Arts One program.

            Pegeen and Lee retired from UBC in 1987 to a log house surrounded by sagebrush and timber in the Okanagan, which they made their perfect place, with horses, cats, many wild birds, and a wood-working shop.

            Pegeen is survived by her sister Sandra Gabriel (George Gabriel); her brother Desmond Brennan (Barbara Chipperfield) and their children Jesse and Kelsey; her husband Lee Whitehead, their son Paul and his wife Lenore, their daughter Lael Whitehead and her husband Richard Iredale, their three granddaughters: Lauren (Blake Wilder), Marlies, and Julia; by a great-grandaughter, Kymera Wilder, born August 21, 2013 to Lauren and Blake; by her foster daughter, Meltem Brennan; and by numerous Brennan and Zimmerlee nieces, nephews, and cousins

Pegeen wanted to be remembered especially by two of her poems: “No Sting” (2005) and “Love” (1977):