"Ladies and gentlemen, for your dancing pleasure, DA-VID MAH!"
That's often how I greeted Dave, impersonating a Las Vegas strip club announcer, because I always knew that when Dave walked into the room, fun times weren't far behind. Like the time he took some pictures of some high school boys and one of the teens decided to play a trick on Dave and identified himself as Dirk Diggler, the porn star from Boogie Nights. Poor Dave hadn't seen the movie so it went into his photo caption.
Naturally, we never let him forget it.
Dave was terrible with technology.
When asked once to help a staff member fix a computer problem, he replied with a smirk: "I'm not that kind of Asian."
One night at the pub, somebody asked Dave where he was from.
"The Far East," he answered.
"Oh, Hong Kong?" the person replied.
"No," Dave said. "Red Deer."
On Saturday morning, just as the Relay For Life, Prince George's passionate annual effort to fight cancer, was getting underway, Dave was losing his battle with this terrible disease.
He took 41 photographs of the Relay For Life for The Citizen, going back to 2008 and right through 2014. He certainly was there in the years before that, as well, shooting for either Prince George This Week or for himself.
He was there Saturday, too, but in the grieving hearts of his many friends and colleagues.
Working in a profession where the best many of us can earn is a grudging respect, Dave was loved.
Looking through his work, it's clear why. Dave loved people and he loved being a photographer.
He kept a police scanner at his bedside so he didn't miss fires in the middle of the night. And he kept a scanner in his vehicle so he could be on the scene of crimes and accidents quickly.
This devotion to his job led him to take what is likely the most controversial front-page photograph The Citizen has ever run.
In August 2010, when Darren Munch was gunned down on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of a residential street in Prince George, Dave took pictures of Munch's body, lying face down in the street.
The Citizen took a lot of heat for running Dave's photograph. Many readers and residents were angry the newspaper would publish such a disturbing image on its front page.
Nobody was angry with Dave, of course. The forgiveness given to Dave for just doing his job was not extended to the newspaper for doing its job.
The following year, Dave won a Canadian Community Newspaper Award for best spot news photography for his picture and Frank Peebles won a Ma Murray trophy for his editorial defending the publication of Dave's shot.
For his newsroom colleagues, the Munch photo demonstrated Dave's courage and commitment as a photojournalist.
Out in the community, however, he'll be remembered not only for the many joyful pictures he took over the years but how he took them. Journalists work hard to build trust in their subjects and photographers have an even more challenging task in developing that trust. Dave was a master in convincing people, old and young, to drop their guard and just be themselves for the camera. Even in the most trying of circumstances, he made them feel safe from behind his lens and he rewarded them with beautiful and honest portraits.
After Dave was diagnosed in the fall of 2014, everyone thought Dave's sunny outlook, combined with the outpouring of community support, would carry him through his treatments in Calgary. When he returned last February to shoot the 2015 Canada Winter Games, he couldn't do much. The fatigue from the chemotherapy got in the way, but so did everyone who ran over to give him a hug and ask how he was doing when they saw him at the Kin Centre, taking pictures of short-track speedskating.
By then, I had changed my greeting when Dave walked into the room. "And then there's Mah, DAVE MAH!" I would shout in a horrible imitation of the theme to the '70s sitcom Maude.
Dave would just smile and bob his head as if I had a beat and could actually sing.
Whenever I would tell a story at home about Dave, I would also use his full name, which drove my daughter crazy.
"Why do you always call him Dave Mah?" Claire would complain.
"Why don't you just call him Dave?"
Because he was more than a Dave.
Because he was one of a kind.
Because he was Dave Mah.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
