Alison Kathleen Bowles, a photographer, counselor and lover of movies, poetry and animals who passionately lived her life in fabled cities in Canada and the United States, passed away on March 4, 2021. She was 57.

Born on Sept. 30, 1963, in Toronto, Canada, Alison became known as Ali to her friends and family, which included her mother, Joan Mae Winter, and her father, Charles Graham Bowles. As a child, she loved playing the game “Chase” with neighborhood kids and siblings Jeff and Jenn. A super-sized game of tag, Chase would last for hours as everyone scurried to hiding places across a sprawling townhome and apartment development. Many adventures abound for kids growing up in the multi-cultural city, where she lived in Jewish and Greek neighborhoods, enjoyed friends from all ethnicities and paid a dime to jump on a subway or streetcar to places known and unknown. During the summers, she spent time in the quaint New Jersey town of Hampton, where her mother grew up and her grandparents, Evelyn and Henry Winter, lived.

Ali moved to Southern California with her mom and siblings in the late 1970s, where within days of moving to a new country she and her sister Jenn figured out how to hop a bus to the beach. They got the shock of a lifetime when they tasted the salty water in the Pacific Ocean. Having grown up by Lake Ontario, they were used to fresh water. They laughed about that incident for years to come. 

Ali attended Culver City High School in the Los Angeles area and went on to study film at California State University, Northridge. While she didn’t pursue a career in film, her talent in photography was clear to all who saw her striking and artful images. She moved to New York in 1997 and lived in Washington Heights near the George Washington Bridge, often the subject of her photos. She attended John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where she studied forensic psychology and graduated in 2002. Ali then became a licensed mental health counselor in private practice, lauded by patients for being an advocate, mentor and a source of guidance. In 2020, she returned to her hometown of Toronto.

She is survived by her mother Joan, father Charles, brothers Jeff and Dan, sister Jenn and many aunts, uncles and cousins on both sides of the US-Canadian border, as well as singer-songwriter Mark Guerrero, her “favorite” ex-husband with whom she lived in Palm Springs. Services will be held on her birthday, Sept. 30, 2021, at 3 p.m. (Eastern time) at Musconetcong Valley Cemetery in Hampton, New Jersey, where her ashes will be buried beside many members of her mother’s family.

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