Jesse Hawkins loved his family, including their dog “Blue,” his job, which entailed scaling tall trees, and writing and performing country music.
“His nickname was ‘Country Bumpkin,’ because he was just loved playing his guitar and he performed at the Country Music Awards in 2016,” his girlfriend Cassie Stoll told Coast Reporter. “He was very talented and he could have made it if only he was still around. He was just amazing. His favorite thing to do was take his pickup truck and play his guitar up a mountain with me and the dog, and being with his close friends around a fire and stuff like that. It's cheesy, but he really loved life more than anyone I knew.”
So, Stoll was surprised and distressed when the 30-year-old went missing just days before Christmas. The couple lived together in Pender Harbour, but Hawkins had taken a job in Gibsons, so the last time she saw him in person was Dec. 14. The last place Hawkins was seen was Madeira Park on Dec. 20. On Jan. 14, RCMP reported Hawkin’s body had been recovered and no foul play was suspected at that time.
Stoll notes months before Hawkins went missing, he’d been struggling with his mental health and had gotten involved with a different group of people than he normally hung out with.
“It sort of brought his energy down a little and his spirit. He was saying, 'I don't feel the same.' Like, he was having a hard time writing songs,” says Stoll. “It’s unfortunate. He was just sort of pulled towards things that weren't necessarily the best. I can tell that in pictures as well, he just wasn't as happy during the last six months. I think everything was compounding and all the people around him were just not the best people to be around. And now looking back and all the conversations we had, he needed help for sure, but it was so complex.”
But Stoll wants people to remember Hawkins as the smart, funny, talented and loving man she fell in love with. The couple met in 2020, when she visited her grandma in Pender Harbour from Vancouver, and Hawkins lived next door. They met around a campfire, where he played guitar and sang.
"Actually, my grandmother told me about this new guitar player and I fell in love right away. He was such an amazing guitar player. He loved just being in the moment in nature and was always telling me to listen to the wind and the trees and just look at the stars,” says Stoll. “And that kind of moved me, so we started dating right away.”
Not long after, Stoll made the move from Vancouver to live with Hawkins in Pender Harbour, where together they loved spending time outside.
“After about two months of us being together, I came home on Christmas and he's holding this puppy,” remembers Stoll. “And I thought it was a stuffed animal, but it was our little boy Blue, who was a Bernese/husky and, oh my God, and it was just the greatest thing ever for us.”
Hawkins had a soft spot for animals. As reported in Coast Reporter in 2021, Hawkins volunteered his time and climbing skills to help rescue cats trapped in tall trees. In one case, a cat “Gitty” had already spent 24-hours, 15 metres up a tree, before Hawkins came to the rescue.
When it came to scaling trees for a living, photos of Hawkins on social-media, show him smiling as he sat perched on a limb, high above the ground.
“His job entails climbing 70-feet up a tree and that was his favorite place to be. He’d be whistling away and singing up there,” said Stoll.
Originally from Ontario, Hawkins moved to the Coast at the suggestion of a long-time friend who had fallen in love with the region and moved here with his family.
“He came from Ontario to BC in 2020 and saw the ocean for the first time. He loved the ocean,” says Stoll. “And then we moved to Pender Harbour and just fell in love with it and we’ve been here ever since.”
She adds, Hawkins made a lot of friends in his short time on the Coast, many who she hopes to see at his celebration of life, a family friendly, potluck party scheduled for Feb. 16, at Lion’s Field in Pender Harbour, from 1 to 4 p.m.
“It will definitely be exuberant cocktail style. Jesse loved to dress up and loved it when everyone was looking good,” says Stoll. “So, I really just want it to be a happy as it can be. His dad is flying out from Ontario, so it’s a big deal. I really feel like he wouldn't want us to be sad and that's really helping me.”
