Jan-Willem Frederick Kappers: Father. Collector. Jester. Underdog champion. Born Aug. 17, 1971, in Edmonton, Alta; died Jan. 5, 2025, in Vancouver; of accidental exposure to carfentanil; aged 53.
Jan-Willem Kappers.Courtesy of family
Jan possessed an incredible gift for making people feel visible and valued, regardless of who they were. Faces would light up at the mention of his name, and there would inevitably be a story of how he made a difference in their lives.
But no matter what people saw on the outside, Jan is gone because of a trauma his brain wouldn’t allow him to remember. The adults meant to protect him knew, but none knew how to fix it. Shame and guilt led to their solution: pretend it never happened. Jan did as he was told and suppressed the memory but as he grew, the trauma led to deep emotional pain which he tried his best to numb, with devastating consequences.
As a child, he was an incredible charmer. With white-blond hair, big blue eyes and a sweet smile, he perfected the mask of innocence, which he could quickly put on for the benefit of the grown-ups. He had the heart of a good-natured trickster, filling his sister’s bed with pinecones, switching the sugar for the salt and blaming her, and once knocking her out with a 2×4 when she pretended to be a ghost to scare him. He enjoyed school but preferred biking with his buddies and proudly showing off his ability to belch the alphabet.
He loved collecting things. When the word got out that he was collecting beer cans, Jan soon had an entire bedroom wall covered with cans from all over the world. At seven, he became an entrepreneur, environmental activist and keen money manager when he discovered he could get paid for returning bottles to the depot.
Jan studied at Trinity Western University in B.C., and when his aviation program was unexpectedly cancelled, his childhood fascination with building wealth led to degrees in finance and economics. He built a career in SAP project management and passionately played the stock and cryptocurrency markets.
He met Rebecca in 2015 while playing online Scrabble. They became fast friends first and grew to be each other’s rock. They lived in Vancouver and loved their cats. Through the most difficult times, Rebecca stood by Jan and always supported him through the unfair distance between Jan and his two children when the kids were spirited away to the United States.
Jan was allowed video chats with Jack and Madelyn twice a week, and he spent hours talking and playing with them, building Lego and learning coding with his son. Even though their relationship was largely virtual, he modelled what good parenting looked like by being emotionally present and engaged. He gave as much as he could to the best of his ability. Every so often, there would be an in-person visit, and he would savour every single moment with them.
For Jan, the trauma of childhood sexual abuse took its toll. Jan was targeted by his father until age 11, when his mother left the marriage and took him to live in the Netherlands. In a misguided effort to protect Jan, she insisted the abuse hadn’t happened, leading his brain to block the memory. The disconnect was too much. Jan began drinking at 14, but no matter what drug he tried and how much of it he took, it was never enough to address the trauma that his brain wouldn’t allow him to remember.
Despite his struggle with addiction, he taught his sister valuable lessons about patience, curiosity, boundaries, how to keep meticulous financial statements and how to tell the safe mushrooms from the harmful ones. Most importantly, he taught her that life didn’t need to be so serious all the time.
If his story encourages even one person to avoid street drugs, to seek help if they experienced trauma or offer compassion instead of judgment to those battling darkness, then his passing will not be in vain.
Jacqueline Kappers is Jan Kappers’s sister.
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