Piper Jane Paige McKinnon (Rachael Allison Becevel)
It is with saddened hearts the family of Piper Jane Paige McKinnon, of Edmonton, Alberta, announces her passing on April 14, 2024, at the age of 50.
Her memory lives on in the hearts of her spouse, Kurt Bayliss; parents, Micheal and Marion Becevel; grandparent, Alice Munroe; siblings, Regan and Sam Becevel, along with many extended family, friends, and beloved cats.
Raised in Victoria, BC, she eventually moved to Vancouver, where she spent several of her favourite years as a singer and songwriter. Drawn to Calgary for new opportunities, here she met Kurt, and began her journey with him. Ever curious, she started university night courses, and soon moved to Edmonton to attend the U of A full time. While at school she explored her love of languages, strengthened her French, and picked up conversational Italian and Spanish. She spent the last few years of her life expanding relationships with her loved ones. She most recently looked forward to remixing and rerecording her old songs with her music partner Gregg.
Piper loved to read, write, and laugh. We will miss her tremendously.
Piper was my very first best friend. We were kindred spirits. We knew each other when our spark was pure and bright. I am devastated by the loss of my dear friend of 42 years. All of my love and thoughts are with you Kurt, Marion, Mike, Sammy and Rags.
I’m grateful for all the fun times I had with Piper when we were children. We used to play dress-up with bedsheets and pretend to royalty with different ways of wearing our gowns and capes, and Piper’s commitment to the mak-believe and imagination made it so fun.
I loved putting on plays with her, we’d make cardboard stages and elaborate characters. Piper was a performer and she was hilarious.
Piper and I wrote ”The Book of Rachel” in a coffee shop one summer in her teens. She had a gift for clever humor – the whole thing was a jab at the book of Morman.
She became a brilliant musician, in no small part to that natural creative talent.
I cherish the memories of our good times together and the special impact she had on me. My heart is with you Piper, thanks for sharing your gifts with me.
I’m so sorry for this loss, Piper was far too young.
It so hard to lose Piper when she still had so much life ahead of her. Somehow, our family seems very much smaller now. One of my treasured memories of Piper was when we were working so hard to establish a women’s shelter in Slave Lake. I invited her to come up and help us out with a fundraiser and she arrived with her band and her Mom!!
The band played until the last person left and we made a bunch of dollars towards our goal.
She had such a great work ethic for this project. I’ll always be grateful to her! But, I think it is something that many people are not aware that she did.