When Isabel LeBourdais first heard that an Ontario court had condemned a 14-year-old boy to death for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl, she was appalled that the criminal justice system showed no interest in giving a deeply maladjusted teenager the psychological therapy he so obviously required. But her opinion quickly changed once…
Tag: obit
Obit: Toronto fire chief Walter Shanahan (1931-2002)
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Walter Shanahan, a firefighter who climbed the ladder to the top of the Toronto Fire Department, has died at the age of 71, largely as the result of lingering respiratory problems caused by injuries suffered in two catastrophic city fires. Shanahan joined the fire department in 1953 and served for many years as a firefighter,…
Obit: herniologist Nicholas Obney (1918-2003)
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Dr. Nicholas Obney, who performed more than 32,000 hernia operations during his long career at the renowned Shouldice Hospital in Toronto and Thornhill, Ont., once told a television interviewer that he had never encountered two hernias the same. Dr. Obney joined the Shouldice Hospital in 1946 and was its chief surgeon between 1965 and his…
Obit: Eugene Fairweather (1920-2002)
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Rev. Canon Eugene Fairweather, an Anglican priest who taught for decades at Toronto’s Trinity College, helped introduce major liturgical reforms to the Anglican Church of Canada and played a leading role in promoting ecumenical dialogue around the world, has died in hospital in Kentville, N.S. at the age of 81. Known as an outstanding scholar…
Obit: Julia Ching (1934-2001), professor of Chinese
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Julia Ching, a University of Toronto professor widely respected for her versatile command of Chinese culture and her ability to interpret it to the West, has died in Toronto of complications from breast cancer. She was 67. A former Catholic Ursuline nun who left the order after 20 years, she went on to become an…
Obit: film worker Bill Brodie (1931-2002)
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Bill Brodie, a film production designer and art director who won a Genie for the Canadian film The Grey Fox and worked on Barry Lyndon, Superman and other acclaimed international features, has died in Cobourg, Ont. at the age of 70. Known for his exacting vision and relentless professional energy, Brodie scouted for locations, designed…
Obit: Sylva Gelber (1910-2003)
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Sylva Gelber, who gained national prominence in the late ‘60s as director of the Women’s Bureau in the federal department of labour, was an outspoken advocate of women’s rights who helped to introduce equal pay legislation, maternity leave and women’s pension benefits into Canadian society. Known for her wit, humour and a love of music,…
Obit: Matt Cohen (1942-1999)
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An overflow crowd of hundreds of people filled the main hall and also a secondary hall at Hart House at the University of Toronto last week for a memorial service for Toronto novelist Matt Cohen, who died December 2, 1999 of lung cancer at the age of 56. Cohen authored some thirty books between the…
Obit: Yiddish writer Yehuda Elberg (1912-2003)
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From The Globe & Mail Six years after his two brilliant novels, Ship Of The Hunted and The Empire of Kalman the Cripple, rolled off the presses in English for the first time, Yiddish author Yehuda Elberg has died in his sleep in Montreal at the age of 91. A Holocaust survivor who helped set…
Obit: Henry Roth, author of Call It Sleep (1907-1996)
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Call It Sleep — what else might one call the hiatus of 60 years that Henry Roth took between publication of his first now-classic novel Call It Sleep (1934) and his next, A Star Shines Over Mt. Morris Park (1994)? Now sleeping the sleep of the eternal, Roth left us with six semi-autobiographical novels that…
