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The last dance

"When you are dancing with your partner, for that two-and-a-half minutes, you are in love with each other. You're corresponding with each other by the moves that you make. It's a love affair, between you and your partner and the music" --Frankie

Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Nov 10/00) - It's not everyone who understands what it means to love dance, but John Fenton did.

And on Oct. 25, Yellowknife lost someone who not only understood dance, but who also devoted much of his life to dance over the last few years.

John succumbed to cancer after being in hospital since mid-September.

For those close to him he will be remembered as someone who gave of himself freely.

Shirley Huxter met John through friends three years ago, and after several ballroom dance classes together, they realized that they danced very well together.

"It was not very long before we were dancing every Friday night at the Elk's Club," says Huxter.

"These have been three of the most enjoyable years of my life. I will miss him very, very much. Not just because we danced, but we cooked, we hiked, we did so many things together.

"He was a great man, a good man."

Dance partner Gisele Forget met John on a most unique dance floor, a very Yellowknife dance floor, you might say.

"It was Folk on the Rocks in 1997," she remembers. "The sun was shining, the music was playing, and John asked if he could dance."

Forget swept her hand, showing John the vast expanse of Long Lake sand.

"He had an innate love of dance. On any day he danced at least two to four hours. It was always a part of him. He took any opportunity to dance. To him dance was like a love affair. It was an intimate part of his being, an intimate language."

Forget adds that the band Five Star Country, who frequently played the Elk's Club, came to recognize that "these people are who they played the music for.

They were always the first couple on the dance floor and the last couple on the dance floor. They knew that John enjoyed and thrived on their music."

He was heavily involved in Yellowknife's incredibly well-attended Ballroom Gala every fall, which will not be held this year.

Last year he organized it with the help of Stan Hutchinson, another dance-lover.

John also taught dance privately and for the City of Yellowknife.

"It was a very successful dance program, and very much because of John's enthusiasm for dance," said Alecia Callahan, program co-ordinator for the City of Yellowknife. "He was a very good teacher."