EDMONTON – This week marks 10 years since anti-smoking crusader Barb Tarbox passed away, but you don’t have to look far to see the legacy she has left behind.
A lot has changed since the 42 year-old mother lost her battle to lung and brain cancer. Unlike in 2003, you can no longer smoke with kids in the car, or at a restaurant. Cigarettes are also not sold in plain view on shelves anymore.
You can still find Barb Tarbox’s face on cigarette packs – a searing reminder of what “dying of lung cancer looks like.”
For her now 20-year-old daughter Mackenzie, that picture still evokes painful memories.
“Mother’s Day just passed and I was actually serving, and one of my guests had a cigarette package on the table, and her photo was on it,” Mackenzie recalls. “To see that photo of her after 10 years in her weakest state, I had to step away for a few minutes and shed some tears, and realize this is life.”
As much as she doesn’t want to remember her mother in that way, she hopes the photograph might motivate people to quit smoking – or at least make them question it – and that’s what her mother would have wanted.
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“Barb was just like, you know, if I can get one teenager not to start smoking, and one teenager to quit smoking and if I’ve saved one or two lives there, great,” says her widower, Pat Tarbox. “So who knows how many lives she’s saved over the last 10 years?”
Shortly after being given her diagnosis, Barb set out on mission to educate kids about the dangers of smoking by showing them where it got her. Starting with her niece’s class, Barb ended up taking her crusade cross-country.
“For most people who are dying or going through a very severe illness, the last thing they want to do is talk to the media or go out and talk to 50,000 school children across Canada,” says Les Hagen, with the Action on Smoking and Health group. “Takes a very, very special person and Barb was that person.”
During her crusade, some criticized her for still smoking. Her family, however, points out it just shows how hard it can be to quit, even when you know it’s killing you; they also believe that even if she had quit then, it would have still been too late for her.
Barb used her final eight months to spread her message before passing away on May 18th, 2003.
“I think the strength that she got from students coming to her in tears and with crumpled up packages are how she just kept going, it kept her motivated and stronger,” her daughter says.
Since Barb passed away, the teenage smoking rate in Alberta has dropped by about five per cent to 13 per cent, which is about 50,000 teens. Government officials are hoping to lower that number further. They have raised tobacco taxes and penalties for providing tobacco to a minor.
“I’m so proud of all the things that she did,” her daughter says. “But I just wish that she was still here, for sure…the big moments in my life that I want to turn to my mom – I’m not going to get that…that’s been the hardest thing for me to deal with.”
Her mother’s memory is being honoured by Alberta Health Services, which has launched the Barb Tarbox Legacy Story campaign. Albertans are invited to share why they quit smoking, or why they never started. Some submissions will be featured at the annual Barb Tarbox Awards of Excellence this fall.
With files from Su-Ling Goh, Global News
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