Colleen Langford

Colleen Lisa Langford, Coco to the many who loved her, lived with a femme tenacity and visionary capacity that greatly exceeded the short fifty years she got.

Born in Red Deer to parents Clarinda (Airey) and Reg Langford, she lived right by the railroad tracks. While her early life was challenging at times, she held pride in her working class upbringing. She fondly recalled a childhood before devices, and finding her people through analogue channels. This included underground venues, record stores, and eventually queer and feminist community spaces in Calgary, Toronto, Edmonton, Vancouver, Nelson and Victoria.

She worked many jobs over her life, including one she held as a highlight, working as a film projectionist at a repertory cinema, where she was exposed to a whole secret world of independent films and the art world that came along. She served on the board of the Fairy Tales queer film festival and remembers fondly finding her way to now, long-gone lesbian bars in Calgary, flagging hard with a Susie Bright book in hand and earning the attention of long strings of dykes cruising her on their way to the bathroom in the back.

Later she found herself working in the rock and roll industry, in bars and venues but also organizing tours and supporting traveling musicians and bands who made their way through Alberta and across Canada.

When living in Toronto she made lifelong friends and relished in the bounty of international cuisines at her disposal.

In Edmonton she got deeply involved in the arts community, making lifelong friends, working at a film and video co-op, and activating the world around her.

Later when she moved out to Vancouver she found herself working in front line social service provision in the DTES, where she formed incredible bonds with her clients, but inevitably burnt out, beginning a string of health challenges that would mount over the last 10 years of her life.

During these years her disabilities and health challenges restricted her stamina, mobility and ability to engage in community. Especially since COVID -19, her world was physically small, maintaining a high degree of caution for her own sake as well as a deeply political act of community care. The social networks that she maintained across distance through digital platforms meant the world to her, especially as her phone became her primary access point to the world. She had friends and lovers across the continent, some of whom had never met in person, but held deep importance to her.

She stepped into queer elderhood through this means as well, forging intergenerational relationships, in which she took sharing queer lineage and power incredibly seriously. She held a reverence for kinky, queer, feminist, activist ancestors and will now take her place among them. She was deeply adored by many and was appreciated for her cutting takes on injustice (especially ableism, sexism, racism, fatphobia and homophobia), her extraordinary goth queen fashion and femme aesthetic, her gorgeous and haunting black work tattoos, and the deep care that she extended to those who she held beloved.

Six years before her passing she had the divine privilege to meet the baby that would become her daughter; getting to be Searyl’s Coco (* queer step-mom) was an unexpected adventure that brought incredible joy and pride to her last years.

Her true calling throughout and beyond all of it though was as an artist. She had a lifelong practice of drawing and began practicing the art of paper cutting, in the tradition of Scherenschnitte decades ago. Through the creation of both large scale single sheet designs, and multi-layer shadow boxes, she told rich stories with disturbing themes like trauma, family violence, war, grief, and the rise of fascism.

She aimed to create works that used humor and evocative story book imagery to leave the viewer both amused and disturbed. She referred to her work as sinister, yet silly; savage, yet tender (which she thinks may have been stolen from No Means No).

Being an active member of the arts community in Edmonton in the early aughts gave her a sense of permission to lean into being a real artist. While she showed work in group shows in Calgary, Edmonton, Seattle, Nelson, and Fernie, her first solo show was held as a guerilla house show during the Fernwood Art Stroll in the spring of 2023. She dreamt of having a larger gallery show, and has entrusted her estate to actualize this vision.

She had much more art to make and struggled in the last stages of her illness knowing that some of the pieces she had imagined or begun would never reach completion.

She is survived by an extensive chosen family including her wifeman Kori (Doty), their daughter Searyl, her partner Johanna (Westerneng), her best friend Jennifer (Burke), beloved femme powerhouse sister Siân (Llewelyn), and her Marsh (Murphy) as well as many, many more friends, lovers, and fans all across the continent. While estranged from much of her family of origin for years, her last days included a flood of healing messages of love from many of her Alberta cousins and aunties who loved her more than she knew until the end.

Her passing was peaceful, surrounded by love, and aligned with her life; sovereign and glamorous, when and how she chose. Her family extends appreciation to the staff at Victoria Hospice, the Medical Assistance in Death program and everyone in her extended networks who held ceremonies under the full moon to support her transition. Her body will be privately cremated and at her wishes no immediate services will be held. Please do not send flowers or gifts. Close friends and family can follow the mealtrain+ that was put in place supporting Colleen's family through her last illnesses for practical ways to help their bereavement. Prints of her work will be made available periodically.