Cele Brating The Life of Phil Pendry

Decades ago, somewhere in North America, I stumbled across this one phrase: Celebration of Life. 

The celebration of a life that has passed. 
Even the phrase itself offers a completely different perspective from the usual “funeral.” 
The gaze doesn’t fall on the grave but on the person — the story of a human being. 
The positive power held within those three words is quite remarkable.

Yesterday afternoon, the most diverse collection of people gathered at the Leaside Pub. 
Family and friends practised the joyful art of celebrating — which, for someone like Phil Pendry, came remarkably easily.

Phil Pendry was, at the time of his passing, a 99-year-old library and a humanist of the first order. 

At fourteen — fourteen! — he already held a union card and his own clapperboard. 
First at Denham and Pinewood Studios, then in the British Army. 
A life lived between camera and history had begun before it had properly lived.

At eighteen, serving as an Army photographer, he documented the liberated concentration camps — Bergen-Belsen, footage for the Nuremberg Trials. 
He later wrote that his only reaction had been to hide behind the camera and use it as a shield against reality. 
The camera as shelter. 
And as witness. 
That brutal moment shaped him for the rest of his life.

He travelled to over 40 conflicts around the world with his enormous camera, supplying Canada’s various media houses with footage along the way. 
He was the first Western television cameraman permitted to film inside North Vietnam — and while he was there, he filmed the state funeral of Ho Chi Minh. 
While the Nixon administration publicly denied that US bombers were striking Hanoi, Phil Pendry was present. 
Camera rolling. 
Images for the truth.

Moscow, 1956 — a different kind of crisis, a different kind of courage. 
When Nikita Khrushchev lost his temper during a speech and the film reels were about to be confiscated, Phil’s CBC colleague Don Gordon hid the rolls under his armpits without a moment’s hesitation. 
Khrushchev shook his hand — and probably suspected exactly what was tucked beneath that jacket. 
Phil Pendry smiled.

And then: Yoko Ono. Tokyo, 1962. A rented apartment. 
A friendship. 
And five years later, in London, a film project that would write its own chapter in history: Film No. 4, also known as Bottoms. 
A Bolex H16 camera, a treadmill, bankers, politicians, and curious Londoners, fifteen-second close-ups. 
The film caused a sensation — and brought Yoko Ono to the sustained attention of one John Lennon. 

So Phil Pendry didn’t just document wars and conflicts. 
He also — quite incidentally — helped shape the history of music.

More than eighty years of professional experience as a passionate visual storyteller left its mark. 
In the form of public film contributions and lasting memories. 
And in the form of dog treats. 
Phil always carried some in his pocket. 
For every dog he happened to meet.

The pub that Sunday afternoon was packed to the family and friends. 
With people on the one hand — but above all, with stories from his long life on the other.

Somewhere, at some point, I read in some brilliant book that the length of a life’s ceremony reflects the qualities of that person. 
The Ceremony of Life for Phil could easily have lasted a few more days, because so many stories still hadn’t been shared. 

But the unanimous verdict about Phil Pendry still rings in my ears: an extraordinary humanist without a trace of cynicism — not a single millimetre of it, as I once wrote — but with a great deal of love for animals and people alike had lived.

The Phil Pendry Library in heads and hearts lives on. As long as I might live.

How joyful and wonderful is that? 
Let us celebrate life a little more. 
Including our own, if at all possible.