Longtime volunteer pushes on without late husband
Maureen Yip has had a tough year, but will be helping at Uplands again
Maureen Yip’s smiling face will be there to greet participants in the Bayview Place Island Savings Open presented by Times Colonist pro-am on Tuesday and she will also be at her station in the hospitality suite once the tournament starts on Thursday at Uplands Golf Club.
A volunteer at the annual Mackenzie Tour-PGA Tour Canada event, Yip has offered up her services at almost every stop the tournament has made in Victoria except for the first year in 1981, when it was played at Glen Meadows.
This year, however, will be very different.
Having lost her husband and volunteering partner Ken to cancer a few months after last year’s tournament, Maureen says it will be very different without Ken, who spent much of his time shuttling media and photographers around the course and assisting in other areas.
The loss of the volunteer extraordinaire has been felt across town as he and Maureen served not only the tournament, but major curling events and the International Jazz Festival.
She has leaned on clubmates to get her through the tough times.
“It’s a wonderful place,” she said of the Uplands club where she is a member and plays three times a week. “Everyone is very supportive and very understand- ing, especially with this tournament and I know Ken would want me to carry on.
“I’m doing it for him,” said an emotional Maureen, who was also assisting at the Thrifty’s Foods Youth Clinic at Uplands today.
Ken, who was too ill to volunteer at the tournament in 2014, was there however when Maureen was recognized as the top volunteer of the year at the annual banquet at tournament’s end where she received an engraved Tiffany & Co. bowl from PGA Tour Canada.
“We all miss him,” she said of her husband of 46 years. “He’s always there, in my mind, in everything I do.”
But especially at the golf course, where the two knew the importance of volunteers, of which roughly 250 help the tournament run with such efficiency.
“It’s fun and that’s what it's all about. Volunteering is what makes it work. Here in this beautiful retirement city, that’s what we do,” said Maureen, who retired from B.C. Tel in 2000 and has kept busy through such events.
“I was surprised to receive the award, but it was very nice. There are others who work as equally as hard.”
Which tournament director Murray Thomas certainly appreciates.
“We couldn’t do it without them and Maureen was such a great choice as the top volunteer last year. She works so hard and is such a nice person,” said Thomas.