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Jamie Lee Hamilton had spirit and moxie. She was innovative, generous, funny, fierce and opinionated, and her death represents a great loss for Vancouver.

Those were among the words friends had for Hamilton, a longtime advocate for transgender and sex workers who died Monday at age 64.

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David C. Jones, a Vancouver entertainer and writer, last saw Hamilton on Saturday, when she was baptized. He and a group of Hamilton’s other friends had filled her room at the Cottage Hospice, where she had been receiving care since Dec. 9, to sing Amazing Grace.

Hamilton was very weak that day and she could only speak in single words at a time rather than full sentences. What Jones told her then serves as a last goodbye between the two friends.

“I said you are an amazing person and you have done so much for the city and for me, and you’re a great friend and I love you.”

Contrast that with their first interaction, when Hamilton publicly criticized Jones over a stance he held on an issue. Hamilton held strong opinions, but she also had the ability to separate people from actions with which she disagreed. The two eventually became close friends, so close even that she allowed him to buy a trio of her outfits for use in a panto of Rumpelstiltskin.