Charles Edward Fineman was born on October 23, 1964, in New York City to mother Susan Saul Fineman and father David Morton Fineman.  He grew up in Pittsburgh PA, where he attended Taylor Allderdice High School and Carnegie Mellon University, graduating in Mathematics in 1986.  

In 1989 he moved to the Bay Area of California to take a job at NASA’s Ames Research Center, beginning a 30+ year career designing and implementing software solutions to complex problems.   He was a highly sought-after senior software architect, working at many top companies including SUN, Stubhub, Google and Salesforce, as well as numerous smaller enterprises.  

He met his wife Claire Kremen in 1997.  They married in Palo Alto CA in 2001 and moved to Princeton NJ, where their daughter Anya Fineman was born in 2003.  They returned to the Bay Area in 200, and lived in Berkeley CA until 2019, when they moved to Vancouver BC. Charlie became a Canadian citizen on July 4, 2025, just a month before he died.  

Charlie was a loving husband, father, son and brother, with fierce and staunch loyalty to his entire extended family and his friends from childhood to the present.  He was devoted to the craft of software development and inspired and mentored many junior colleagues with his elegant coding.  He loved ultimate frisbee, telemark skiing and road riding, as well as hiking and backpacking in the mountains.  In Berkeley CA he was a well-loved member of the Grizzly Peak Cycling Club and rode with them most Saturdays.  In Vancouver BC he joined the Meraloma Cycling Club, riding strongly with their  fast team.  In 2013 he began serious long-distance cycling, training for and completing the “Death Ride” in the Sierras of California (103 miles, 5 mountain passes and 14,000 ft of elevation gain) with a group of friends.  He continued long distance cycling annually until 2022, completing, among others, the Alta Alpina Challenge, a “double century” (198 miles, 8 mountain passes and 20,300 ft of elevation gain), and the Davis Double, a double century conducted in steaming hot conditions.

As a husband, Charlie was always supporting his wife’s career, criss-crossing the continent several times with her as she moved between universities, and serving as ‘house husband’, creating gourmet meals and hosting dinner parties, in the years following his retirement.  As a father, Charlie’s greatest joy was to introduce his daughter to foods, movies and music that he loved and to teach her the skills of biking, backpacking and mathematics — his long-held passions.

Charlie was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer with no known cure, in August of 2021.  Despite the grim prognosis (i.e., most people die within 6 to 18 months), Charlie carried on, returning to his job at Salesforce after surgery and treatment and taking on new responsibilities for the company, work which he was passionate about.  He retired from Salesforce in 2023.  He continued biking with Meraloma, and completed the Okanagan GranFondo in BC with the club in 2022, even though, unbeknownst to him, he had just contracted covid. [He was just surprised that his time was slower than he had expected and that he was unexpectedly tired.]  He traveled widely through these years, visiting numerous countries (Mexico, France, Greece, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Saint Maarten, Australia) with family and friends; attending family weddings, funerals, graduations and reunions in the United States; skiing at various resorts; and hiking, camping and backpacking in various National Parks and protected areas in US and Canada.  He did all of these things, and more, despite continued progression of the cancer and the need for repeated surgeries and chemotherapies.  He died on August 6, 2025, at St. John’s Hospice in Vancouver, surrounded by his immediate family, after a precipitous decline in his health following the third surgery.

He was a fine man who contributed to every venture and lived life fully and with zest to the end of his days.

He was buried at the Heritage Gardens Sustainable Cemetery in Surrey, BC on August 15th in a green burial.  He is survived by his wife Claire (64), daughter Anya (22), mother Susan Fineman (84), brother Adam Fineman (59), sister Rachel Sheinbart (57), numerous other relatives, and his beloved dog Oliver (10).

In honor of Charlie, please consider supporting causes that he cared about,

Wikimedia Foundation

Southern Poverty Law Center

or places that helped Charlie and his family during Charlie’s cancer journey:

St John’s Hospice

Vancouver Coastal Health [with special reference to the Palliative Care program In Home, Pacific Spirit Community Nursing]

Canadian Red Cross 

Caring Bridge

British Columbia Cancer Foundation [with special reference to Neurooncology Unit]

Vancouver General Hospital [with special reference to NeuroSurgery Unit]

Brain Tumor Network