S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHACK - All Categories in OGSPI

SHACKELL o@ca.on.middlesex_county.london.london_free_press 2008-04-26 published
ALLEN, Beatrice " Jean"
Unexpectedly at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto on April 24th on her 66th birthday Beatrice "Jean" ALLEN of Toronto. Loving daughter of the late Chuck and Beatrice ALLEN of Komoka, sister of John ALLEN and his wife Diane of London, aunt to nieces Tracy of London and Debbie, her husband Don and son Nicholas SHACKELL of Wasaga Beach. A graveside service will be held at Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens, London on Monday, April 28th commencing at 11: 00 a.m. Elliott-Madill Funeral Home, Mount Brydges entrusted with arrangements.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHACKELL - All Categories in OGSPI

SHACTER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-07-23 published
GLOWER, Pauline
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Pauline GLOWER on Monday, July 21, 2008. Beloved wife of the late David GLOWER. Loving and devoted mother and mother-in-law of Jerry GLOWER, and Harvey GLOWER and Janet SHACTER. Dear sister and sister-in-law of the late Anne and Morty WISE. Beloved aunt of Rhona, Heather, Jerry and the late Sandra WISE. At Benjamin's Park Memorial Chapel, 2401 Steeles Avenue West (three lights west of Dufferin), for service on Wednesday, July 23rd at 1: 00 p.m. Interment Community section of Pardes Shalom Cemetery. Shiva 15 Multiflora Place, Thornhill. Donations may be made to the Pauline Glower Memorial Fund, c/o The Benjamin Foundation, 3429 Bathurst Street, M6A 2C3 or at www.benjamins.ca.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHACTER - All Categories in OGSPI

SHAER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-07-09 published
JACKSON, Thomas Donaghue " Don"
(December 20, 1922-July 8, 2008)
Don JACKSON leaves to mourn his partner Kate MacDOUGALL, children Lynda (Bob SHAER), Robert (Carol), Cam (Sunny), Patti (Dave), and Andrea (Paul BERECZKY,) and grandchildren Aaron, Nathaniel, Justin, Jackie, Catherine, Angela, Ben, Alyx, Lauren, Jackie, Troy and Arleen. Predeceased in 2002 by his beloved wife of 54 years, Nighean JACKSON, and by his son David in 1979. He will be greatly missed by all his family, many Friends, and associates. Friends may call at the Steckley-Gooderham Funeral Home (30 Worsley Street at Clapperton) Barrie, from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. on Thursday. Funeral Service at Collier Street United Church, 112 Collier Street, on Friday July 11, 2008 at 11: 00 a.m. Donations in Don's memory may be made to the Canadian Cancer Society, Muscular Dystrophy Association or a charity of your choice. Condolences may be for warded through www.steckleygooderham.com

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHAER - All Categories in OGSPI

SHAHGHASY o@ca.on.middlesex_county.london.london_free_press 2008-05-02 published
Couple stabbed to death in daylight by total stranger
The couple, aged 52 and 53, were described as 'outstanding' members of the community
By The Canadian Press, Fri., May 2, 2008
Brampton -- A married couple stabbed to death during an afternoon visit to a plaza in Brampton were "wonderful people" who became the unfortunate victims of a "completely unprovoked" attack, Peel police said yesterday.
Nazifa SHAHGHASY, 52, and her husband, Rahimullah SHAHGHASY, 53, were at the plaza for a medical appointment Wednesday afternoon when a stranger brandishing two knives attacked and killed them.
They leave behind a 21-year-old son and a 19-year-old daughter.
The SHAHGHASYs were "outstanding members of our community" who came to Canada from Afghanistan 20 years ago, said Insp. Norm ENGLISH.
"This was a stranger attack, unprovoked, in broad daylight," he said.
"They did not know each other prior to that day."
Rahimullah SHAHGHASY was buying food while his wife made an appointment at a dentist's office, police said.
As she returned to their car, a man armed with two knives -- with blades about 25 centimetres long -- began stabbing her "for unknown reasons," English said.
As Rahimullah SHAHGHASY saw his wife being attacked, he rushed to save her but was also stabbed. Bleeding from his wounds, he staggered into a plaza shop for help before collapsing.
They were both pronounced dead at the scene.
When police arrived, the suspect started stabbing himself, prompting officers to use a Taser to subdue him, ENGLISH said.
The suspect was taken to hospital, where he was under police guard yesterday and in critical but stable condition.
ENGLISH said the man, who is from Brampton, will be charged with second-degree murder once his condition improves. He said his name will be released once he is charged.
ENGLISH said the suspect is "very well known" to them on a "variety of criminal matters," but he would not elaborate on the charges.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHAHGHASY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-05-02 published
Stabbing ends 20 years of peace for Afghan couple
Police detail fatal attack at Brampton mall
By Anthony REINHART and Timothy APPLEBY and Susan KRASHINSKY, Page A1
Brampton, Ontario -- They called him Papa around the Planet Ford dealership, although Rahim SHAHGHASY was just 53.
The nickname just seemed to fit Mr. SHAHGHASY, a car detailer with a fatherly manner whose love of friendly chatter came a close second to the fondness he held for his wife, Nazifa, and their two grown children.
Yesterday, those children, along with Friends, relatives and neighbours, struggled with a horror at odds with the peaceful life the couple had led since leaving Afghanistan for Canada two decades ago: their violent deaths outside a Brampton strip mall at the hands of a seemingly crazed man they didn't know.
"This man was armed with two knives and the attack was completely unprovoked," Inspector Norm ENGLISH of the Peel homicide squad told a packed media conference.
"The husband saw what was occurring and attempted to save his wife, but was overpowered by the male."
The 28-year-old assailant remains under police guard in hospital recovering from serious knife wounds he inflicted on himself after the noon-hour attack on Wednesday outside the Red Maple Plaza.
The incident was initially thought to be a marital dispute in which a woman was killed along with a male passerby trying to help her, but police amended their theory yesterday.
Insp. ENGLISH said Ms. SHAHGHASY had just made a dental appointment at the plaza and was walking to her car when she was accosted by the knife-wielding man, who was "very well known" to police, though a stranger to her.
Her husband, meanwhile, had made a quick trip into a small grocery store in the plaza. When he came out, he saw his wife being attacked and ran to her.
"Both victims suffered fatal stab wounds and died at the scene," Insp. ENGLISH said, adding that Mr. SHAHGHASY first made his way, bloodied, into another business in the plaza to ask a merchant to call for help.
Police arrived to find the assailant stabbing himself in the neck and used a taser to subdue him. His condition, described as critical but stable yesterday, has prevented police from questioning him and has delayed the laying of second-degree murder charges. His name will be withheld until that happens, likely in the next few days, the officer said.
The suspect, a Brampton resident, was out on bail on a charge involving violence, which Insp. ENGLISH would not disclose.
Autopsies will be conducted today and the funeral will be held as soon as possible, in keeping with Islamic custom.
The circumstances of the triple stabbing, which pushed Peel's homicide tally for the year to 11, are being examined by the province's Special Investigations Unit, which probes all police-related confrontations resulting in death or serious injury.
"The victims are wonderful people who were outstanding members of our community," Insp. ENGLISH said.
The impact on the community was evident in the parade of vehicles that converged yesterday on Siesta Court, a quiet cul-de-sac of 13-year-old homes where the SHAHGHASYs bought a tidy, brick-clad two-storey house for $415,000 in 2006.
Their home, about 10 kilometres from where they died, was often the scene of happy gatherings, but yesterday, relatives and Friends wept and embraced in the street, while news reporters and a few neighbours looked on.
"The family is in a state of shock," said Shawn JAMSI, whose wife is Ms. SHAHGHASY's sister. "My wife has been in the hospital, back and forth" from the shock, he said.
Ms. SHAHGHASY ran a clothing store in Brampton, and "I'd always see her dress up really professional with a briefcase or a purse, and I always thought, 'wow,' said neighbour Christina SASSO.
Yesterday morning, Ms. SASSO watched as the couple's 19-year-old daughter, Kubra, prepared the outside of the house for the onrush of grieving kin.
"I just saw her sweeping the driveway, the dirt; I was just watching her, just sweeping and sweeping," Ms. SASSO said. "It looked like she was in a daze, and it just brought tears."
Mr. SHAHGHASY had been slowly but steadily recovering from a workplace accident about two years ago, neighbours said. He had been using a walker to get around, but had recently moved up to a cane.
"I said, 'I'm so happy to see you like that,' and he said, 'Yes, I'm doing really good,' Gorretti ANDRADE, who lives a few doors away, recalled from an encounter three weeks ago.
The couple's positive outlook and good humour came up time and again in interviews with those who knew them.
Giovanni ZAMBITO, who lives next door, recalled them as "probably the nicest people I ever met, to tell you the truth."
Gurpreet VANDER, also a neighbour, broke into tears upon learning what had happened. She said Mr. SHAHGHASY often played with her children and would stop on the way to get his mail and chat, since they both spoke Urdu.
"No other families understand our language, and we don't understand their language," Ms. VANDER said. "So sometimes we would talk."
Mr. SHAHGHASY's penchant for talk was well known to several car dealers in the Brampton Auto Mall along Bovaird Drive, where he cleaned cars in preparation for delivery. He most recently worked at Planet Ford, while the couple's 22-year-old son, Qaiss, is a salesman at a nearby Mitsubishi dealership.
Between phone calls in the showroom yesterday, a young receptionist at Planet Ford described the elder Mr. SHAHGHASY as a wise man who, despite being unable to work recently, would drop in to share stories of his Afghan childhood or dispense fatherly advice.
"He would tell me stories about how he was raised back home, and how he met his wife, and how he loved his wife," she said.
Yesterday, his co-workers found themselves in the same state of sad confusion as the couple's relatives and neighbours.
"I couldn't believe it; it was devastating," Julee FARIAS said from behind her desk in the service department. "We did love him."

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHAHGHASY - All Categories in OGSPI

SHAKER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-04-30 published
SHAKER, George Joseph
(August 29, 1919-April 28, 2008)
George died peacefully at home. He is survived by his beloved wife Yvonne, loving father of Catherine (Paul) McKERNAN, Mary Ellen, and Barbara (John) REID. Cherished grandfather of Trevor, Andrew and Owen. Loved brother of Robert, Abraham, Kathleen, Emily and the late Frank and Adele.
George was born in Trenton, Ontario and moved with his family to Toronto at the age of nine. After graduating from high school he studied as a radio operator and joined the merchant ship AD Huff as First Radio Officer. On February 22, 1941, his ship was sunk in the North Atlantic by a German battleship and he spent the next four years in German Prison of War camps. The prisoners were liberated to "the most beautiful sound in the world," the sound of bagpipers by British troops in April, 1945. George returned to Toronto to complete a degree at the University of Toronto and built a rich and full life with his family and Friends.
The family wishes to acknowledge with sincere appreciation Doctor DIEF and the staff of the Angio Department of North York General Hospital for their many months of care and support. Our appreciation to Estella and Donna for their compassionate nursing care.
The family will receive Friends at the Humphrey Funeral Home - A.W. Miles Chapel, 1403 Bayview Avenue (south of Eglinton Avenue East), from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. Wednesday, April 30th. Service in the chapel on Thursday, May 1st at 11 o'clock.
If desired, donations may be made to the Angio Department, North York General Hospital, 4001 Leslie Street, Toronto M2K 1E1. Condolences and memories may be forwarded through www.humphreymiles.com.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHAKER - All Categories in OGSPI

SHAKESPEARE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-07-07 published
McINTOSH, Mildred Doreen
(December 28, 1923-July 4, 2008)
It is with heavy hearts that we announce the unexpected passing of Mildred at Mount Sinai Hospital. Loving mother of Jennifer (Paul) SHAKESPEARE of Richmond Hill, Ontario, Bob (Jennifer) McINTOSH of West Palm Beach, Florida, and Jim (Catherine) McINTOSH of Aurora, Ontario. Loving and cherished grandmother of Tara and David SHAKESPEARE, Robin, Cassandra and Jacqueline McINTOSH, Michael, Lauren and Mackenzie McINTOSH. Predeceased by sisters Florence, May, Nellie, Daisy and brothers Bill, Les and Frank, as well as her loving companion and dear friend Ted WHITLOCK. Mildred will be sadly missed by her loving niece Isabel MILLER and very close Friends Lynn LAW and Buella MULLINS. A private family service will be held. Please join us in a celebration of Mildred's life on Thursday, July 10, 2008 at 4 p.m. at Timberlane Athletic Club in Aurora. www.timberlaneathleticclub.com 905-727-4252. Reception following. Summer casual dress. Condolences and memories may be forwarded through Thompson Funeral Home, 530 Industrial Parkway South, Aurora, Ontario L4G 6W8. thompsonfuneral@hotmail.com
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to a charity of your choice.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHAKESPEARE - All Categories in OGSPI

SHAMMAS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-05-01 published
EVANS, Michael G.C.
Peacefully on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at Toronto Western Hospital, at the age of 65. Loving partner, and lifetime friend, of 33 years of Faris SHAMMAS. Mr. EVANS was the head Coach, and Conductor, at the University of Toronto Opera School. Donations to the Parkinsons Foundation of Canada would be appreciated as your expression of sympathy. A celebration of Mike's life will be held on Friday, May 2, 2008 at 11 a.m. in the Coach House Chapel of the Rosar-Morrison Funeral Home and Chapel, 467 Sherbourne Street (south of Wellesley).

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHAMMAS - All Categories in OGSPI

SHANAHAN o@ca.on.middlesex_county.london.london_free_press 2008-03-24 published
STEEP, Denis
At London Health Sciences Centre, Victoria Campus, on Friday March 21, 2008 Mr. Denis STEEP of Clinton in his 54th year. Beloved husband of Heather HART. Dear Dad of Daniel. Father of Curtis (Rosa) and Cedric STEEP. Dear brother and brother-in-law of Ken STEEP of Clinton, June SHANAHAN of London, Linda SMITH of West Palm Beach, Florida, Leonard and Jean STEEP of Huron Park, Deb and George BROMLEY of Huron Park, Deb and Zeke NIKITIN, John and Brenda HART, Bob and Jackie HART all of Clinton, Ken HART of Kitchener, and Tanya HART and Mike of Clinton. Predeceased by his parents William and Annie STEEP, sister Barb VAN DAMME, and by brother-in-law Doug SMITH. Friends will be received at the Falconer Funeral Homes 153 High St. Clinton, on Tuesday from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. where the funeral service will be held on Wednesday March 26, 2008 at 2 p.m. Cremation. As expressions of sympathy memorial donations in Trust for Daniel's education (Cheques made payable to Heather Hart in Trust) would be greatly appreciated.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHANAHAN o@ca.on.middlesex_county.london.london_free_press 2008-04-04 published
SHANAHAN, John Charles
At London Health Sciences Centre, University Hospital on Wednesday April 2, 2008. John Charles SHANAHAN of London in his 85th year. Beloved husband of the late Norma Ileen (PICKETT) SHANAHAN (1998.) Loved father of Brenda FANSHER of Kitchener and Steven SHANAHAN of Bayfield. Dear brother of Phyllis BOYD and her husband Owen, and Sally FOSTER all of London. Also survived by his grandchildren Tracey, Joseph, Arlene, Luke, Ben and great-grand_son Ethan. Predeceased by his parents Rose and Charles SHANAHAN, his brother Gerald R. SHANAHAN and his brother-in-law Jack FOSTER. Also remembered by his many extended relatives. Cremation has taken place. At John's request, there will be no funeral home visitation or service. Arrangements entrusted to A. Millard George Funeral Home, 60 Ridout Street South, London (519-433-5184). As expressions of sympathy, memorial donations may be made to the Shriners' Hospitals for Children, 468 Colborne Street, London, Ontario, N6B 2T3 as well as the Salvation Army, 371 King Street, London, Ontario, N6B 1S4. John was a member of the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 317. John served on the Royal Canadian Navy H.M.C.S. Trentonian. After standing at attention for all this time Leading Seaman John C. SHANAHAN K4234753 can now be "at ease." Online condolences accepted at www.amgfh.com.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHANAHAN o@ca.on.middlesex_county.london.london_free_press 2008-04-22 published
LAVIN, Sister Anna Catherine " Anne"
Of the community of the Sisters of Saint_Joseph of the Diocese of London, died peacefully on April 21, 2008 at the residence of the Sisters of Saint_Joseph. Sister was in her 93rd year and 65th year of religious life. Lovingly remembered by her sister-in-law Audrey LAVIN of Windsor, neices, nephews, Friends and the Sisters of her religious community. Predeceased by her parents Joseph LAVIN and Catherine (SHANAHAN,) brothers Edmund, Leo, John, Glenn, Patrick, Thomas A. and sisters Catherine, Marjorie, and Eileen. Sister spent over 30 years as an educator in Windsor, London and Sarnia. Following retirement from teaching, she was in ministry to the elderly at Marian Villa in London. Many will remember Sister Anna Catherine for her strong faith, keen wit, and ongoing interest in life. All services for Sister will be held at the residence of the Sisters of Saint_Joseph, 485 Windermere Road, London. Visitation will be held from 4: 00 p.m. on Wednesday April 23 with the Vigil Service at 7: 00 p.m. The Mass of Resurrection will be held on Thursday April 24, 2008 at 10: 00 a.m. Interment Saint Peter's Cemetery. John T. Donohue Funeral Home 519-434-2708.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHANAHAN o@ca.on.middlesex_county.london.london_free_press 2008-05-08 published
STEEP, Ken
At Clinton Public Hospital, on Tuesday April 29, 2008 Mr. Ken STEEP of Clinton in his 70th year. Lovingly remembered by his family Paul STEEP, and Leonard STEEP. Dear brother and brother-in-law of June SHANAHAN, Linda SMITH, Leonard and Jean STEEP, and Deb and George BROMLEY. Predeceased by daughter Tammy STEEP, his parents Bill and Annie STEEP, sister Barbara VAN DAMME, and brother Denis STEEP. At Ken's request no visitation. Cremation has taken place. A graveside service will be held at the Clinton Cemetery, Clinton on Saturday May 10, 2008 at 11: 30 a.m. As expressions of sympathy memorial donations to the Canadian Cancer Society would be greatly appreciated. Funeral arrangements entrusted to Falconer Funeral Homes, Clinton (519-482-9521).

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHANAHAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-01-03 published
His landmark commission on drugs urged legalizing marijuana in Already a respected legal scholar, he became an improbable counterculture icon at the height of the hippy era by recommending leniency and the decriminalization of recreational drugs
By Noreen SHANAHAN, Special▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S6
Toronto -- Gerald LE DAIN's respect for civil liberties went so far as to rouse John Lennon and Yoko Ono from their bed. It was 1969, the year of the couple's "bed-in for peace" at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, and the year Judge LE DAIN began chairing the much-referenced but largely ignored Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs.
The Le Dain commission's final report was one of the most politically explosive documents ever put before the federal government. The commission held 46 days of public hearings, received 365 submissions and heard from 12,000 people in about 30 cities and at more than 20 university campuses across the country. In its final report, in 1973, the commission recommended decriminalizing marijuana possession because the law-enforcement costs of prohibition were too great, and suggested that Canada focus on frank education rather than harsh penalization. It also recommended treatment for heroin addiction and sharp warnings about nicotine and alcohol. This was delivered at a time when hysteria about the evils of pot was on everyone's lips and many parents wanted the law to save their drug-addled teenagers.
The report also made Judge LE DAIN something of an unlikely counterculture icon and helped win him a place on the Supreme Court of Canada during the formative years of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Gerald LE DAIN was born in Montreal to Eric LE DAIN and Antoinette WHITHARD. His younger brother, Bruce, went on to become one of Canada's foremost impressionist landscape painters in the style of A.Y. Jackson and Tom Thomson. Gerry graduated from West Hill High School in 1942 and a year later, at 18, he joined the army and became a gunner with the 7th Medium Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery, a unit that was in the thick of the fighting from D-Day until the surrender of Germany in May of 1945.
Immediately after the war, he attended the military's ad hoc Khaki University in England. One day, the school arranged a debate with students of Westfield College, then a women-only college associated with the University of London. During the event (debate topic: a woman's place in the home,) he met Cynthia Emily ROY and, two weeks later, they became engaged. After being demobilized from the army, she joined him in Montreal, where they married and he set about finishing his education.
In 1949, he obtained a law degree from McGill University and was called to the Quebec bar. He spent the following year at a university in Lyons, where he gained his doctorate. On his return from France, he joined the Montreal law firm of Walker, Martineau, Chauvin, Walker and Allison and stayed three years until he returned to McGill as a professor of constitutional and administrative law. He also worked as counsel to Quebec's attorney-general on constitutional cases.
In 1967, he left Montreal to become dean of Osgoode Hall Law School, where, said colleague Harry Arthurs, he presided over a revolution in Canadian legal education. "It was his responsibility to persuade York University, the Law Society of Upper Canada, and the world at large, that what we were doing was not only the legitimate - not only the sensible - but the inevitable way forward." It was during this time that Pierre Trudeau asked Judge LE DAIN to chair the commission. He was, at 44, perfectly suited to the job in many ways. By then, many young Canadians were indulging in marijuana and other recreational drugs; as a university professor, he was surrounded by many students who had at least given it a try. And as the father of a large family, he was adept at bridging the generation gap and responding empathetically. During the time he chaired the commission, there were four full-fledged teenagers, and one on the cusp, living in the LE DAIN home.
The commissioners were asked to study the non-medical use of sedative, stimulant, tranquillizing, hallucinogenic and other psychotropic drugs or substances, including the experience of users. At his first news conference in 1969, he announced that, in the interest of research, he might experiment with the stuff himself.
"We made it possible to talk about drugs openly," he later said in an interview with The Globe and Mail. "In some of our early hearings, especially in smaller communities, you could feel the guilt that had been stored up around drugs. We also made it possible for people to criticize their institutions, to challenge their doctors, their school boards, their churches."
The Le Dain commission broke new ground in terms of taking the show on the road, said Mel GREEN, who worked as a sociologist with Judge LE DAIN at the time. Judge LE DAIN redefined the nature of a public inquiry by asking the public to directly participate, he said. "The commission found little traction in terms of changes in the law itself. … There was a cultural divide between conventional attitudes and youth culture and I think the Le Dain commission helped bridge that gap." Inspired by Judge LE DAIN, Mr. GREEN decided to switch careers and went to law school. He is now an Ontario provincial court judge.
By early 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono had created a stir with their public "bed-in" at a hotel in Amsterdam. On May 26, the couple booked into Room 1742 at the Queen Elizabeth in Montreal. To Judge LE DAIN, they seemed to be just the kind of advocates for youth the commission should hear from. A meeting was arranged aboard a C.N. train in Montreal and, for 90 minutes, the couple shared their views on the drug culture and the generation gap. "This is the opportunity for Canada to lead the world," said Mr. Lennon, referring to the Le Dain commission. "Canada's image is just about getting groovy, you know." When it was over, Mr. Lennon gave his phone number to members of the commission.
It was not always such clear sailing. Commissioners also had to contend with a kind of "live bait" issue, where police were arresting young people who braved the generational divide to attend these public gatherings and tell their stories. In 1969, the 16-year-old son of communications theorist Marshall McLUHAN was arrested as he was leaving a coffee shop in Yorkville, Toronto's then-hippy neighbourhood, where the commission was meeting. Michael McLUHAN was convicted of criminal possession of a small amount of hashish and sentenced to 60 days in jail; he ended up serving 30 days and was eventually pardoned.
Marie-Andrée Bertrand, one of the Le Dain commissioners, remembers those days and the difficulties in protecting witnesses. "Some of us went to [then-solicitor-general Pierre] Goyer and we said, 'Call off your gendarmes, monsieur!' and went to Trudeau, and it was slightly more calm after that," she told the Ottawa Citizen in 2003. "Imagine if Monsieur Lennon had been arrested or harassed. What a humiliation that would have been for all of us."
Although the commission's recommendations were never followed, there were significant changes in the public attitude toward drugs and in lighter sentences being handed down to offenders.
At a time when the generation gap was described as a gulf, Judge LE DAIN had gained the respect of both sides of the drug-use argument. In a 1988 Globe and Mail column, Michael VALPY described him as a quiet, intellectual, spiritually minded academic who earned the praise of young people, the social agencies and the scientific community. "His commission acquired the reputation of being the most hard-working, open-minded and widely respected ever to tackle a major national problem."
In 1975, Judge LE DAIN was appointed to the Federal Court of Appeal and the Court Martial Appeal Court. He remained there until May of 1984, when Mr. Trudeau appointed him to the Supreme Court.
His tenure at the court during the early years of the Charter proved to be, in some ways, a trial by fire not only for him but for the other eight justices as well. A 1988 Globe and Mail article described a series of crises that nearly exhausted the court as a result of a backlog of Charter cases. At the time, it was referred to by political scientist Peter Russell as "A terrible rash of injuries" similar to the kind experienced by beleaguered players on a hockey team.
Not surprisingly, Judge LE DAIN was one of the members of the court who struggled most during this time. As a result, he stayed only five years before an emotional breakdown brought about his retirement in 1988. Even so, he left his mark on Charter decisions.
One example was the case of R. v. Therens (1985). The issue was whether a drunk driver could evade conviction on the grounds that police had violated his Charter rights by not informing him of his right to call a lawyer before compelling him to take a breathalyzer test. Judge LE DAIN's former law clerk, Bruce RYDER, recalls that he struggled painfully over the case - partly because it recalled the death of his daughter Jacqueline a decade earlier from an automobile accident.
"As he spoke, he was pounding himself so hard in the chest I thought he might knock himself over. He took a deep breath, and we returned to our work." In the end, Judge LE DAIN crafted an opinion that did right by the victims of highway accidents and by the Charter. In memorable language, he affirmed that the enactment of the Charter signalled a new era in the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms.
"Out of complexity and nuance, he produced masterfully succinct statements of the law," said Mr. RYDER.
In his retirement, Judge LE DAIN worked on a range of projects, including preparing his papers for the national archives and meticulously crafting his memoirs. But his early retirement continued to be plagued by personal tragedy: first with his wife Cynthia's death in 1995 of cancer, then his daughter Catherine's death of pneumonia in 1998.
In 1990, the U.S. Drug Policy Alliance instituted an award in Gerald LE DAIN's name, to be given to individuals involved in law who have worked within official institutions "when extremist pressures dominate government policies." The influential organization includes law-enforcement officials, academics, professionals, health-care workers, drug users and former users. "We sought to name the awards after our heroes," said founder Arnold Trebach. "Gerald LE DAIN was certainly one of them. Few people realize the level of hate directed at drug users and drug policy reformers decades ago."
Judge LE DAIN, the first Canadian to be so honoured, had earlier been made a companion of the Order of Canada.
Gerald Eric LE DAIN was born on November 27, 1924, in Montreal. He died in his sleep at home on December 18, 2007. He was 83. He is survived by his son Eric and daughters Barbara, Jennifer and Caroline. He was predeceased by his wife, Cynthia, and by daughters Jacqueline and Catherine.
Correction - Friday, January 4, 2007
The majority of the Le Dain Commission on the non-medical use of drugs recommended in 1973 that possession of cannabis should cease to be a criminal offence but that sale and distribution of cannabis should remain a crime. Incorrect information appeared in a headline in yesterday's paper.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHANAHAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-02-01 published
She entertained Toronto and the troops, carting her organ from stage to stage
Born to a talented family, she became a musical fixture in a growing city and beyond
By Noreen SHANAHAN, Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S9
Toronto -- As a classical organist, Dorothy BROMBY's performances were like a soundtrack for a maturing city in the 20th century. From her early days in cinemas, performing during intermission, to troop shows during the Second World War and rounding up prize-winning animals at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, her music bellowed in the eclectic corners of Toronto's entertainment industry for more than five decades.
Ms. BROMBY was the first female conductor at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, and at age 20, probably the youngest. She performed, produced and directed shows at the Winter Fair, the Royal Horse Show, the National Home Show, Ontario Place and Yorkdale Mall. With great dedication and care, she carted her Lowery Organ from stage to stage.
She also inspired others to succeed. David Rogers, one of Canada's leading musical theatre talents and former star of the Toronto production of The Phantom of the Opera, said Ms. BROMBY taught him how to be a professional.
"[She said] that it was a business that had to be taken seriously. She always commanded respect."
Dorothy BROMBY was born into a musical and entertaining family. When her father, Harold, was still in his teens, he was personal trumpeter to the Duke of Atholl in Aberdeen, Scotland. Later, in Canada, he served as bandmaster for the 116th Battalion during the First World War. When Dorothy was a child, it was not unusual for her to find veterans camped out on the living room floor, especially during the annual Warriors' Day Parade. She also had an uncle who played the xylophone, drums and zither at the Canadian National Exhibition grandstand for afternoon circus performances.
Dorothy's first public performance was as an elementary student in Toronto's west end. In those days, children were expected to quietly line up in front of the "girl" or "boy" entrance. Once her piano skills became known, she was expected to be at the keys twice a day to herd them through the proper doors. Her uncle, Walter, even wrote a special piece of music for her called the Western Avenue School March. By the time she was in high school, the organ was her favourite instrument. In 1941, she took a job playing at cinemas across Toronto, including the Odeon Carlton, the Humber and the Danforth Music Hall.
Around the same time, she started performing for the troops at Ontario military installations, including Camp Borden, Barryfield and Muskoka's "Little Norway" base.
"She was the youngest member of the musicians' union," said sister Bernice BOYD, "and our parents had to make sure the colonel in charge at each camp would look after her."
She often teamed up with Scottish comedian Billy Meek, who went on to a regular role on Pig and Whistle, the iconic Canadian television variety show. In addition to troop shows, Ms. BROMBY volunteered to play for wounded servicemen who were convalescing in Toronto.
In her teens, Ms. BROMBY summered in the Toronto Islands. (Her mother, Lily, had lived there when she first came to Canada from Belfast in the early 1920s.) The cottage lacked a piano until one day when her parents were bicycling at the Eastern Gap harbour entrance and spied a table grand in the sand. They borrowed a Toronto Transit Commission freight wagon and, with Friends, pulled it home.
"Our parents restored it as best they could," her sister said. "And this was where Dot did all her rehearsing. When we had parties, the piano was closed and used as a buffet table."
During the war, Ms. BROMBY did shows at the Royal York and King Edward hotels, performing with four other women in a group they called The Dorothy Bromby Singers. She wrote the music and played accompaniment on the organ, pressing the 40 stops to emit different sounds, including trumpets, strings and drums.
In 1946, she was hired as the musical conductor for Stop and Go, a variety revue at Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre that featured artists from wartime entertainment troupes: the Accordionettes, the Modernettes, Lay Kenny's Teenagers, the Rhythmteens and the Leslie Bell Singers.
John KARASTAMATIS, the theatre's current director of communications, noted how rare it was for women of this era to be allowed to conduct.
"Working in the home and 'slave labour' were pretty well the only jobs for women at that time," he said.
Ms. BROMBY married fellow Ward's Islander Jim SMYTHE in 1948. While overseas during the war, Mr. SMYTHE had fallen in love with a picture of her snapped by a mutual friend. He insisted on meeting her as soon as he was back in Toronto. Her reputation as a musician had also charmed him while he was away.
"I fell in love with Dorothy the moment I saw her," he said. "I married her in '48 and had 59 years of bliss. It was an island romance."
After the war, the Singers hit the road, this time taking four male performers along with them. They were hired by Chrysler and General Motors to do cross-Canada tours, putting on grand spectacles each time a new car was introduced. In 1955, Ms. BROMBY did a two-week run for GM, performing as many as five shows a day. It was an exhausting but manageable schedule, even though she had two children at home under the age of 5. The group also performed on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television during its early years in the 1960s, and Ms. BROMBY later played the organ on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation variety shows and dramas hosted by Monty Hall and Rick Campbell.
She performed as a solo instrumentalist at the Canadian pavilion in Montreal during Expo 67, mingling with other performers, including Maurice Chevalier, Marlene Dietrich and a fresh-faced Luciano Pavarotti. (Ms. BROMBY's son, Ron, also played the clarinet in his high school band at Expo).
Ms. BROMBY began working at the Winter Fair and Flower Show at the Canadian National Exhibition in the late 1960s, and remained there until she retired in 1995. It seemed as though she had found her niche and refused to abandon it. From this point on, she was surrounded by bouquets of flowers. Her dedication to the job was such that she once performed with a broken wrist. "They built a stand for her arm at keyboard height," said her son, "and the furriers covered her cast with a mink muff that matched the mink stole she wore."
After a few years at the flower show, Ms. BROMBY went on to work with the ring committee in the horse arena. Her talent as both performer and director were particularly noted, especially on the closing ceremonies.
Mr. Rogers recalls the early days of his career, following Ms. BROMBY in circles around the ring. "I remember her with her music in a binder, leading the troops with her singers and dancers behind. We'd follow her through the horses and cows [stalls], she in her fancy gown with her hair higher than anyone else's."
The ceremony consisted of a parade in the centre ring, showcasing Ms. BROMBY on the organ. (She also wrote the script.) There were award-winning horses festooned with flowers, colourful bushels of fruits and vegetables, sheep, cows, geese, chickens - for 26 years, she left nothing out.
"She brought the show business pizzazz," daughter Sandy RUTHERFORD said. "They asked her to come back, even up to two or three years ago… because it now lacks that extra flavour."
When the ring was full, the lights would go down - gradually, so as not to spook the animals - and the president of the fair would enter the gate. He'd circle the ring once or twice, sitting with his wife in a three-horse buggy, officially close the event, and exit to great applause.
During her retirement, Ms. BROMBY enjoyed spending time at the family's cottage in Haliburton, Ontario, and turning her musician's hands over to gourmet cooking.
Dorothy Bromby SMYTHE was born December 4, 1925, in Toronto. She died in Toronto on December 24, 2007, from cancer. She was 82. She is survived by husband, Jim, daughters Sandy RUTHERFORD and Pat BUIE and son, Rob BROMBY. She is also survived by her sister, Bernice BOYD, and eight grandchildren.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHANAHAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-02-08 published
Actor enjoyed long Stratford career and doubled as a gifted drama coach
Trained in British repertory and a graduate of a famous London school for actors, he built a highly regarded Canadian career and founded Toronto's George Brown Theatre School
By Noreen SHANAHAN, Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S8
Toronto -- Joseph SHAW was a pillar of the Stratford Festival who liked nothing better than to mentor young actors struggling to wrap their tongues around Shakespeare. "I wouldn't be an actor without him," said Alison Lawrence, who was one of the actor-director's first students. "He had great faith in us. He used to say that he would never kick anybody out of school, but that the actual work in the theatre [community] was going to select people."
She recalled a flamboyant teacher whose style sense had never left the 1970s. He'd stride about wearing hip-hugging bell-bottoms, love beads and a shiny white belt, said Ms. Lawrence, who is a regular on the Toronto stage and who co-wrote the three-woman comedy Bittergirl. He wore an ascot, splashed on what seemed like cartons of cologne and puffed at an elegant cigarette holder.
His students adored him, even when he dramatically blew smoke in their faces. He demanded professionalism and insisted they pay careful attention to voice training, movement, dance, music - all the bits and pieces that go with being a well-rounded actor.
Joseph SHAW was born in Lancashire, England, and fell in love with the theatre at an early age.
His first Shakespearean role came while a schoolboy at a British boy's school. He played a woman - Hermia - in A Midsummer Night's Dream. During the Second World War, he joined the Royal Air Force and was assigned menial work until his true talents were discovered. After that, he was put in charge of staging musical shows and skits to entertain the troops and boost morale. As a young man, he studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, also the training ground of Julie Christie, Claire Bloom, Jeremy Brett, Peggy Ashcroft, the Redgrave sisters and many others. In 1949, he won the school's gold medal for acting and spent the next five years appearing with various companies throughout Britain.
In 1954, Mr. SHAW was asked by director Leslie Yeo (obituary, September 25, 2006) to join his London Theatre Company in Saint_John's. "Joe could fit new lyrics to age-old Newfoundland sea shanties and milk all the local sacred cows," Mr. Yeo wrote in his book A Thousand and One First Nights.
Former Canadian Broadcasting Corporation writer and producer Jeannine Locke recalls meeting Mr. SHAW in Saint_John's more than 50 years ago. "I remember seeing him for the first time, leaning against the fireplace mantel, looking exactly like a school boy for the Jolly Boys Annual, with his blond hair and blue eyes. Very English good-looking in a way I thought all English should look."
In 1962, he moved to Toronto to act and direct at the Crest Theatre. The Crest signalled the beginning of commercial theatre in Toronto, and for 13 years, audiences were treated to local productions. Until then, audiences had been entertained mainly by touring companies from Britain or the United States. Among other actors at the Crest were Richard Monette, Barry Morse, Jackie Burroughs, Frances Hyland, Amelia Hall, Eric House, Martha Henry and Kate Reid.
While working at the Crest, Mr. SHAW moved into what was possibly the only theatrical rooming house in Toronto at that time. The house on Sherbourne Street was owned by Canadian author Shirley FAESSLER and it was alive with actors and dancers and such writers as Margaret Laurence, Adele Weisman and Mavis Gallant. Mr. SHAW met his wife, actor Mary SAVIDGE, by sharing a tiny kitchen with her at the house. In 1960, they exchanged wedding vows in the living room. Their son, Timon SHAW, remembers from an early age always being around assorted groups of thespians and other creative folk. "My father had the most extraordinary character and spirit, whether he was on stage or off. His love and fascination for life and the arts was nothing short of infectious."
In 1962, Mr. SHAW began a long run at the Stratford Festival, occasionally in productions alongside his wife. Among his first roles were Duncan in Macbeth and Pedant in The Taming of the Shrew. "He had a kind of elegance to him," said general director Antoni Cimolino. "He was able to play the leading-man stuff very well, but he also had a wonderful comic sense. Not a low comedian, but he had real status and style, so he had a bit of a chameleon in him."
In the mayor's role in a 1989 run of A Shoemaker's Holiday, Mr. SHAW tucked the back of his cape inside his tights just as he stepped onto the stage. "I heard this great wave of laughter at the right side, and it spread across like a wave at a football field," said Mr. Cimolino. "What was brilliant about this piece of business was that it was the pin that pricked the pomposity of the character and made him human. So, as an artist, he found a way to add something to the whole and make it better."
As a mentor, Mr. SHAW was once particularly helpful to a certain fresh-faced Romeo Montague. Mr. Monette, former artistic director at the Stratford Festival, tells a story in his memoir Rough Magic about how Mr. SHAW arranged a dinner with Sir John Gielgud in 1976. The British actor was in Toronto to perform at the Royal Alexandra Theatre and Mr. SHAW came straight to the point: "A friend of mine is a rising young Canadian actor who has just played Hamlet and is about to play Romeo. He'd love to meet you."
A fine evening followed where Dom Pérignon flowed, conversation sparkled, and lobster thermidor was picked dry. Finally, at 2 a.m., quietly urged on by Mr. SHAW, Mr. Monette asked Sir John, arguably the greatest Shakespearean actor of the 20th century, for some pointers on how to play Romeo. "Well, it's very difficult," he replied. "You see, in the first act, you get a crick in your neck from the balcony scene."
In 1975, Mr. SHAW founded Toronto's George Brown Theatre School and served as its artistic director for 10 years. His role as mentor reached profound proportions during this decade.
"He cared tremendously about the theatre in Canada, the future of the theatre in Canada and the future of the young Canadian theatre professionals," said Diana Reis, a teacher who worked with him in the early 1980s. "He built a bridge between the theatre training of old that concentrated on skills classes, dancing, voice, deportment and elocution, to the modern theatre training classes. And at that time, it focused on the Stanislavski-based work that was so popular in America, most specifically by [the American actor] Uta Hagen."
He also revealed great depth in musical theatre.
"Joseph had a lot of experience writing musical shows… he had been doing that in Newfoundland," said Judy Peyton WARD, who worked with him at the theatre school. "He had a great gift in writing musical lyrics [and] he put that to good use at George Brown."
Key to his philosophy was to hire faculty members who came not from academia but from the theatre. A case in point was Ms. Peyton WARD, a successful costume designer and cutter whom he brought from Stratford. She easily transferred her skills to the George Brown curriculum, handing students their own scissors and telling them to cut and sew.
Operating a theatre school and performing fitted neatly into Mr. SHAW's calendar. Typically, he would finish his "season" at the school and head off to Stratford to begin rehearsals.
Inevitably, there was overlap. Toronto actor Dan Chameroy benefited from Mr. SHAW's mentoring while auditioning for a leading role in Cymbeline in 1992. "He was my launching pad when it came to Shakespeare… without his help and assistance, I don't think they would have looked at me seriously," he said. "It was the intimidation of speaking without music underscoring my every word, fear of being out there alone with only words: 'Oh my God, I have to speak Shakespeare.' "
Standing in Mr. SHAW's tiny Stratford living room, he was instructed in breathing, punctuation and how to use his voice in the many ways demanded by the Shakespearean language. "There were so many different approaches to the work that I had never really thought of," Mr. Chameroy said.
Mr. SHAW's own enthusiasm for his trade never flagged. He staged plays and musicals in Montreal, Halifax, London, Toronto and Saint_John's, and in 1979, he played the lead role in Blithe Spirit at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake. On television, he appeared in The National Dream, King of Kensington, Street Legal, A Gift to Last and Ray Bradbury Theatre. More recently, he appeared in The Great Defender and Dieppe.
His roles at Stratford included the King of France in All's Well That Ends Well; the title role in Julius Caesar; Dorilant in The Country Wife; Old Adam in As You Like It; Seigneur Anselm in The Miser; John of Gaunt in Richard II; and Abbe Faria in The Count of Monte Cristo. His final roles were Vintner and Archbishop Scroop in the 2006 production of Henry IV, Part 1. By that time he was 85. "I'm sure some people wonder why I continue to act, well past the usual retirement age," he said in the program guide. "The answer is quite simple: I'm still stage-struck."
Joseph SHAW was born January 6, 1921 in Lancashire, England. He died of emphysema in hospital in Stratford, Ontario, on January 9, 2008. He was 87. He was predeceased by his wife, Mary SAVIDGE, in 1982. He is survived by his son, Timon SHAW.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHANAHAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-02-29 published
The first lady of Blue Mountain faced ups and downs beyond the slopes
Forced from a Slovak idyll, she adapted to Canada, helped build a resort and became an author
By Noreen SHANAHAN, Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S8
Toronto -- Helena WEIDER was known as the first lady of Blue Mountain. Nearing her 100th birthday, she could still be seen strolling along the streets of Collingwood, Ontario, her knapsack bulging with fruit and vegetables picked up in local shops.
"That's Jozo WEIDER's widow," people would say, recalling the other half of the couple who built the successful Ontario ski resort in 1941, overcoming poverty, the language gap and xenophobia after immigrating to Canada from wartime Czechoslovakia.
Blue Mountain's history is an immigrant success story. Starting with a single hill and a chalet, the pair spent 30 years developing Blue Mountain, which became a multimillion-dollar resort that remains in the family today, shared with Intrawest ULC. But like the ski hills Ms. WEIDER helped to create, her life was full of ups and downs.
Helena Uhrova WEIDER was born in Bohemia while it was still under the rule of Austria-Hungary, part of the Hapsburg dynasty. Her father was the town's only architect. He died when she was 2 and her stepfather, also an architect, died six years later. Her stepfather's funeral took place on June 28, 1914, the same day Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo. During their brief time together, her stepfather often took Helena into the mountains, where she developed a passion that grew to define her life.
In 1926, she entered the University of Prague, a radical venture for a young woman at that time, and took a job after graduation at a government insurance company for the working class. It was because of a generous gift from her boss - a ski holiday in the mountains - that she met Joseph (Jozo) WEIDER at his tiny ski resort in the Carpathian Mountains of Slovakia in March, 1934.
In those days, there were no lifts or tows; skiers had to climb 2½ hours up the 1,400-metre slope. Helena was initially charmed by a sign the entrepreneurial Mr. WEIDER left beside a pile of bricks at the bottom of the slope, asking each person to kindly cart one brick up the mountain for the chalet's chimney. After a few days on the slopes and a few nights chatting by the fire, Mr. WEIDER surprised her with a proposal of marriage. "I think, Helena, we should get married. You love mountains and I have them," he said.
So it was that, one spring morning, they dressed in their finest ski pants and schussed down the mountain for their wedding. "Among the last mounds of snow, the snowdrops blossomed profusely," Ms. WEIDER said in her memoir, written when she was 96. "Jozo picked a bunch and pinned the wedding bouquet on my shirt."
Later, they repeated the descent into the village, this time for the birth of their son George. In the dead of night, Jozo outfitted a sled with chains, attached a thick mattress and a tumble of blankets, and settled Helena between the sheets. She wrote of munching a sandwich between contractions.
"When the pains came, I would stop chewing. It was usually at the most dangerous parts of the descent… among the 80 guests we had [at the ski lodge], two of them had just become medical doctors, and they skied beside us to be ready for an emergency."
She ran the resort while Mr. WEIDER taught skiing techniques and led treks in the mountains. Après-ski time was spent either making music - he played the accordion - or watching ski films in the chalet. But their good fortune was interrupted by war.
In early 1939, with Hitler poised to march on Prague, the two found themselves separated. Ms. WEIDER was in Slovakia while her husband was in England promoting the resort. Unable to return to Czechoslovakia, he applied to have his family immigrate to rural Canada as refugees, and encouraged Ms. WEIDER to take a crash course in cow-milking. But before she got a chance to take hold of an udder, she received a telegram from her husband saying: "Do not milk, sweetheart, come."
While her sister Jarmila turned the Slovakian chalet into a shelter for Czech resistance fighters, the WEIDERs joined a group of 160 Sudeten German families departing from the port of Southampton, England. Their ship, the Duchess of Athol, arrived in Quebec City in June and the family was immediately sent by rail to B.C.'s Peace River district, near the Yukon border.
The settlement was run by the Canadian Pacific Railway and was in primitive surroundings, for which Ms. WEIDER's Girl Scout training prepared her well. Water was a particular luxury. Each day, a team of three people filled heavy barrels at the river, formed a human chain and passed buckets up the steep hill to a waiting wagon.
In 1940, daughter Helen was born. Delivering a baby in this remote settlement was a tremendous challenge. There was one hospital within a large territory; farmers brought their pregnant wives to town from miles away, long before they were due to give birth.
Shortly after the birth, Mr. WEIDER was hired by the Canadian Pacific Railway to work as a ski instructor attached to the Château Frontenac in Quebec City. Ms. WEIDER remained behind, caring for two babies, milking cows, baking bread and fetching water, while she learned English from a well-thumbed Eaton's catalogue. Later that year, she and the children joined Mr. WEIDER at another Quebec ski lodge.
In 1941, they were convinced by Peter CAMPBELL, a Toronto lawyer and future senator, to move to Central Ontario and run the fledgling operation at Blue Mountain, certain that Canadian skiing could be more than just Whistler and the Laurentians.
In Collingwood, "We lived in a community of farmers who were suspicious of foreigners, especially since we worked on Sundays - God's day! But Jozo soon won them over, and later they happily worked on ski weekends to add some cash to their income while the fields lay dead," she wrote. Twin daughters Anna and Katherine arrived in late 1942.
Some of the stories about Blue Mountain's origins have almost become Ontario legends: the rapid growth of profitable ski hills from what had been a farming and shipbuilding town; the ski train's daily runs to the hills from Toronto, complete with sing-alongs being picked up at the Craigleith depot by Mr. WEIDER and his horse-drawn sleigh. There was the "Red Devil" sled, which carted skiers up the slopes, and green days before snow-making machines. (Mr. WEIDER installed one of Ontario's first.)
In 1971, however, Mr. WEIDER was killed in an automobile accident on his way to Toronto. Ms. WEIDER grieved so deeply that she stopped skiing. But her love for mountains continued. Sixty-five years old, she left the resort's operation to son George, and moved to the small village of Nerja, in the Almijara range of southern Spain, where she lived for the next decade and a half.
"For a long time, [Ms. WEIDER] was the only woman who ever climbed Mount Cielo," said her friend Christina Mackenzie, who lived in the same village. "She was very talented; she bought one of the three little villas on a hill - the highest one. She was very gifted at seeing the potential of a building."
She became fluent in Spanish, renovated two houses and wrote two books: Tales from Andalucia and The Mountain Ballad. But in 1986, she decided to return to Ontario. Her family built a house for her at the foot of Blue Mountain, and from there she took many road trips, including to the Yukon at the age of 85. In 2002, she began her memoir.
"A long time ago I made a resolution to bring the story of my life to paper, so as to let my children know their roots on their mother's side. Lying in bed in the predawn darkness of my 96th birthday, I realized with a jolt that I could not postpone it any longer," she wrote.
But there were still many years left in her life - years in which she wandered among the skiers, resort-users and locals. George WEIDER suggests that a possible reason for her death was primarily because she had lost the will to live after her twin daughters died of cancer in 2007.
Helena Uhrova WEIDER was born October 6, 1906, in Nymburk, Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. She died of natural causes in Collingwood, Ontario, on January 22, 2008. She was 101. She is survived by her son George and daughter Helen, eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. She is predeceased by husband Jozo WEIDER and daughters Katherine and Anna.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHANAHAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-04-01 published
'Conscience of Canadian publishing' was a champion of free speech
As director of the Book and Periodical Council, she promoted writers and publishers, helped settle copyright issues and encouraged literacy. Most of all, though, she fought censorship wherever it lurked
By Noreen SHANAHAN, Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S8
Toronto -- Nancy FLEMING/FLEMMING has been called the conscience of Canadian publishing, the keeper of its secrets, a patient instructor and a fierce opponent of censorship in all its forms.
As executive director of the Toronto-based Book and Periodical Council, she left behind a legacy that includes Freedom to Read Week, the Canadian Children's Book Centre, Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Institute, Give the Gift of Literacy, and everything from the Book Industry Freight Plan for book shipments to the royalty payments of the League of Poets.
A certifiable bookworm, her own shelves bulged with hundreds of books. Not surprisingly, the collection revealed a predilection for banned books with titles ranging from Asha's Mums to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. She was particularly interested in female North American writers, "and that automatically includes a number of banned authors: Margaret Laurence, Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro," said her daughter Martha. "They've all experienced having their books banned… not by the state but by individual libraries or faith-based schools."
She was born Nancy CHISHOLM in a flat above Mildred Rose's millinery shop in Toronto's west end. In an unpublished memoir, Ms. FLEMING/FLEMMING described how as a little girl during the Depression, she learned her colours in the hat shop. Her father worked in another store up the street, selling shoes. "The shoe business was a good one," she wrote. "After all, children's feet did grow… and men who had jobs (or were looking) needed them."
As a teenager, she studied commercial arts at Western Technical High School in Toronto, learning about the world of clerical and retail business, which were traditional routes for women in the 1940s. Shortly after graduation, she met Allan FLEMING/FLEMMING, who had studied commercial art at the same school but was a year older. In a sense, he already knew her: He had fallen in love with a photograph of her in the school yearbook.
The couple married in 1951 and soon moved to England, setting up in a garden flat near Chelsea. Ms. FLEMING/FLEMMING worked in a Soho garment factory while her husband studied type and printing. It was an exciting time to be abroad. In London, they became Friends with filmmaker Ken Russell, who went on to direct Women in Love, Tommy, and Altered States. And they rubbed shoulders with the likes of Pablo Picasso in Paris. They were dining in a Spanish restaurant there when they were suddenly asked to pull in their chairs. "Just as the musicians and dancers were coming to the stage, the waiter asked us to move briefly so he could escort the customers… it was Picasso and Jacqueline [Roque] we stood up for. He nodded in acknowledgment but I'm reasonably sure he remembered me less than I him," she wrote.
Four years later, they returned home on a freighter, putting in at Rimouski, Quebec, to pick up timber. There were 11 passengers on board and each afternoon, they sipped tea together and nibbled tin after tin of Peak Frean biscuits.
Back in Toronto, Ms. FLEMING/FLEMMING became acquainted with the city's arts community, largely through her husband's work as art director at Maclean's magazine and chief book designer for the University of Toronto Press. Mostly, she spent the next two decades raising their three children. As she wrote in her memoir, "[I chose to] forget about running the world."
She was, however, the underpinning for all her husband's busy freelance career, looking after the books and serving as project manager on such corporate assignments as his acclaimed logo for Canadian National Railway. "She was a fantastic executive wife and became a fantastic executive herself," said her daughter Martha.
In 1977, everything changed when Mr. FLEMING/FLEMMING died suddenly. By then, Ms. FLEMING/FLEMMING had begun working at the Toronto constituency office of John Roberts, a Trudeau-era Liberal member of Parliament with a committed interest in Canadian arts and culture. Two years later, the Book and Periodical Council offered her the job of executive director. "Take it, Nancy," said Mr. Roberts, who was anticipating a federal election call. "One of us must be employed."
He lost the election and she began her career - feet first - in Canadian publishing. In running the BPC, an umbrella organization for associations involved in writing, editing, publishing, manufacturing, distributing, selling and lending books and periodicals in Canada, Ms. FLEMING/FLEMMING immediately launched into issues dear to her heart. At the top of the list was the fight for intellectual freedom and how to best manage a disparate community of players.
"Nancy was one of those key people who laboured in the trenches on behalf of the writing and publishing community," said novelist Graeme Gibson, the author of Five Legs (1969), Perpetual Motion (1982) and The Bedside Book of Birds (2005). "The quiet dedication and persistence needed for such work is far too often overlooked."
Perseverance was indeed a key requirement of the job. Over the years, controversy dogged Ms. FLEMING/FLEMMING - both in council meetings, where the clash of different philosophies sometimes stirred up conflict, and anywhere that books and magazines were being stopped at the border, pulled from library shelves or removed from children's hands.
"Nancy worked well with everybody: her board, committees - she was the kind of person who was strong, had her own opinions, and her views were sometimes controversial, but she put everything else aside for the sake of making the project a success or making the event happen," said Jackie Hushion, executive director of the Canadian Publishers' Council. "It's hard running an organization of organizations, and she was very good at helping all the various entrants get to the point of saying: Okay, let's just get on with it and get it done."
As Jane Coutts's boss at the Book and Periodical Council, Ms. FLEMING/FLEMMING prioritized the work so as to always achieve the big at the expense of the small. For instance, she let Ms. Coutts draw a line on the wall and not do any filing until the pile of papers reached it. Meanwhile, Ms. FLEMING/FLEMMING's determination to champion free speech in Canada went well beyond anti-censorship. According to Ms. Coutts, she once laboured long into a Friday evening trying to free her young assistant, who had inadvertently locked herself into the supply cupboard at the Toronto office. "We were hours late going home that night. The door had to be taken off its hinges. And Nancy just thought it was funny. Once I got out. She was far too mother-hen-ish to laugh at me while I remained locked in."
Franklin Carter, an editor of the journal Freedom to Read, said Ms. FLEMING/FLEMMING never backed down in the fight to prevent controversial books and magazines from being removed from libraries, schools and even convenience stores. "Some people think that the Freedom of Expression Committee defends only classic novels by Alice Munro and Margaret Laurence from would-be censors," he said. "We do defend these books, but we also defend the right of Canadians to read gay pornography and Mein Kampf."
Defending Vancouver's Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium was a case in point. Janine Fuller of Little Sisters said Ms. FLEMING/FLEMMING worked tirelessly on their decades-long struggles against Canada Customs, which had seized shipments of books and materials considered pornographic and obscene.
During the early years of the fight, at a time when the store was receiving little support, she said Ms. FLEMING/FLEMMING sent "a bottle of scotch, mailed it from Toronto during our court case, saying that she was thinking of us and knew how difficult it was to go through the process."
The fight went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. In 2000, the court ruled that customs officials were indeed harassing the store by seizing its books and videos. It said the government had the right to censor material, but was doing so unfairly and needed to change its procedures.
By that time, Ms. FLEMING/FLEMMING had retired. She left the BPC in 1999, to accolades and tributes. Three years later, she was joint recipient of an award for the Advancement of Intellectual Freedom in Canada for her work on the Freedom to Read Kit. The award, which is recognized by the Canadian Library Association's Advisory Committee on Intellectual Freedom, honours contributions to intellectual freedom by individual librarians, libraries or institutions. The kit itself was seen as an essential reference tool for the Canadian library community, as well as a key lens through which to examine the state of censorship at a time when threats to freedom of expression are prevalent. Ms. FLEMING/FLEMMING shared the award with co-workers Peter Carver and Sarah Thring.
Mr. Gibson, who worked with Ms. FLEMING/FLEMMING for close to four decades, said her contribution to Canadian publishing was essential: "I have a sense there was a period in the history of the BPC when Nancy was central in keeping it alive and kicking."
The secret, he said, was her quiet and unrelenting devotion.
"Translate this 'quiet' activity into sound and you have something resembling Gustav Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand," wrote Ruth Pincoe, of the Editors' Association of Canada, in a 1999 tribute to Ms. FLEMING/FLEMMING.
Nancy FLEMING/FLEMMING was born Nancy CHISHOLM on June 23, 1931, in Toronto. She died there peacefully on February 24, 2008, after a long struggle against emphysema. She was 76. She leaves behind children Martha, Susannah and Peter, as well as their partners and her grand_son, McCullough.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHANAHAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-04-14 published
She was the godmother of daycare centres in Canada
Trained in Boston because early childhood education was unavailable at home, she helped launch the first federally funded daycare centre and never looked back
By Noreen SHANAHAN, Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S12
Toronto -- Margaret KIDD was one of the earliest teachers in Early Childhood Education in Canada. Her life's work began during the Second World War when she helped establish the first federally funded daycare. It was a time of desperate need, when mothers tied their young to fence posts and set off for their jobs at munitions plants.
Ms. KIDD later taught in early childhood education at Ontario community colleges, and served as a childcare consultant in India, Tanzania, Botswana, Zambia and the Philippines.
The youngest of six children born to a British immigrant family who settled in Toronto during the final days of the First World War, she was a bright and ambitious child. Years later, she always felt grateful to her elder siblings; they quit school early and went to work, but insisted she continue on with her studies.
In 1939, she was in the first graduating class at the University of Toronto's new sociology department. Strongly influenced by Tommy Douglas and the Canadian Commonwealth Federation, she hooked up with other idealistic students who became activists fighting for the creation of social institutions such as medicare and daycare.
At that time in Canada, there were no training programs for childcare workers. Undeterred, Ms. KIDD headed down to Boston's Tufts University where a rudimentary course was offered, focusing mainly on healthy nutrition and probably directed more toward mothers than to working professionals. As a result, she became an advocate of healthy eating long before it was fashionable.
In 1938, while in Winnipeg at the first national conference of Canadian University Students, she met J. Roby KIDD. He was the first Canadian to earn a doctorate in adult education. Early in their relationship, the couple made a deliberate decision, based on a shared vision and commitment, which helped shape Canada's social and political landscape. Doctor KIDD set up the institutional infrastructure for adult education, basically popularizing the idea of lifelong learning. Ms. KIDD, meanwhile, played a key role in bringing the institution of quality daycare to thousands of Canadian families.
They were married in 1941, and while Mr. KIDD quickly moved ahead with his goals, she helped launch a nursery in Montreal that became the first daycare centre to be funded by Ottawa. Through her experience there she resolved to make the notion of daycare centres grow and flourish.
By that time the war was raging and daycare as we know it today simply did not exist. Huge numbers of women entered the work force and took up war work of all descriptions, filling a labour gap caused by so many men having joined the armed forces and being sent overseas. Although it sounds outrageous, some war-time working mothers actually did tether their children to the fence in the front yard, leaving their neighbours to check on them during the day. At the time, it was accepted that they had little choice. After all, there was a war on.
According to Canadian Broadcasting Corporation archives, some working mothers also left their children in orphanages during the war, usually on a temporary basis. Others were lucky if they found neighbours or relatives to care for their children. The federal government soon considered war-time nurseries an essential war-time service, charging eligible women 35 cents a day.
By the time 1943 came around, the couple was living in Ottawa, where Doctor KIDD took a position as director of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education. In July, their son, Bruce, was born. The eldest of what would become an eventual brood of five children, he grew up to be an Olympic athlete. His brother, Ross, followed a couple of years later. In 1946, they moved back to Toronto where Alice, David and Dorothy were born.
Ms. KIDD insisted that her children push themselves just a little bit harder physically. She trained her youngest child, Dorothy, to walk further and further distances along Queen Street. If she heard one of the others whine for a streetcar ticket she'd say: "If your little sister can walk that far, so can you."
Bruce KIDD remembers the early days of his mother's mission, back in the mid-forties when she toddled him off to St. Aiden's Church in Toronto's east end - not to pray, but to play. He often sought out his friend John Sewell, perhaps over by the building blocks. (Mr. Sewell became Toronto's mayor a few decades later.)
Her energy for political activity also grew during these years. Her daughter, Dorothy KIDD, got her political start as a six-year-old on her neighbour's doorstep, listening to her mother eloquently pitch for local Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation candidates.
"I'm not sure when the penny dropped for her to make a career out of engaging developmental opportunities for children at the earliest possible age, and fighting public institutions to do that," Bruce KIDD said. "It became the theme of her life from the late 1930s until she stopped actively working."
In 1961, the family moved to Ottawa where Doctor KIDD took a job as director of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education and Ms. KIDD dove into child-development issues, including setting up nursery schools. Passionate for political discussion at this time, she also formed a women's group that met regularly to discuss the Vietnam War. Dorothy KIDD remembers a film about the Mekong Delta in Vietnam at one meeting, and discussing the impact of the war on Vietnamese women and children.
The once-radical notions of universal daycare and adult education were closer to becoming realized, as the couple spread their implacable vision for social reform onto the popular psyche. In many ways, Ms. KIDD practised her child-focused philosophy on her own children. Bruce KIDD still remembers the one and only time he ever heard his mother swear. It was on the phone with his high-school principal, who suggested that Bruce stay in school rather than travel with the Olympic team. Ms. KIDD told this man that the competition was an important experience for Bruce that he wanted to go and would learn a great deal from it. Plus, she said, he'd ace his spring exams. She was right.
Ms. KIDD's work as an international childcare consultant began in 1965, when the family lived in Jaipur, India. Her husband was hired to work in adult education at the University of Rajasthan. When they returned to Toronto a year later, Ms. KIDD decided to pursue her masters degree in sociology, graduating from the University of Toronto in 1970. She became an early childhood education instructor, first at Centennial College and later at Seneca College, both in Toronto. She also insisted that the quest for new professionalism didn't wipe out the years of unpaid childcare work women had been doing.
At Seneca College, Ms. KIDD helped launch a project called the MILE (Mobile Intensive Learning Experience) where a group of students from various disciplines climbed aboard buses and travelled across the country. Instead of learning only from books, they met the real-life key players behind an issue. For instance, while studying Canadian labour, they went down into the mines or walked the picket lines and interviewed people who were making do without wages. If they were studying early childhood education, they visited daycare centres to witness how different communities applied their understanding of child and community development.
"I was so proud to see her direct a fleet of students and buses and to see how the students were transformed by this," said Bruce KIDD, who joined her on a MILE project on sport and recreation policy. "She gave them a visceral, intellectually critical sense of this country and realized that there was more to Canada than just Toronto."
In 1977, Ms. KIDD became an inspector with the Ontario government's Community and Social Services Ministry, Children's Services Division. Throughout her tenure, she remained hopeful at the same time as being wise to the system's imperfections. But rather than close down troubled centres, she set her sites on problem-solving with them. Waiting-list numbers convinced her that fewer daycare centres was not the answer.
She once demonstrated for daycare reform at Toronto's City Hall. While her students gathered with their freshly crayoned picket signs, many of whom had their own toddlers underfoot and joining in with the chants, Ms. KIDD unpacked sandwiches and doled out juices. "She was like a supermom," Dorothy KIDD said. "She was teaching the next generation to look after kids while at the same time mothering them."
Ms. KIDD began working as an instructor in Ryerson University's Early Childhood Education program in 1980, as well as running the school's on-site daycare and children's learning centre. In 1982, her husband died suddenly of a heart attack. At that point, he was an educator and founder of the adult education department at the Ontario Institute for Education, as well as a professor of comparative studies in Adult Education.
In 1986, Ms. KIDD was invited to India by a group of women construction workers keen on establishing a daycare for their children. Upon her retirement in 1987, she returned to India, this time with a small delegation of Canadian women that included Julie Mathien, current director of Early Learning and Child Development for the Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services. "Because [Ms. KIDD] had lived there, we had a view of India we never would have had otherwise," Ms. Mathien said.
Margaret KIDD was born Margaret Edith EASTO on May 25, 1918, in Toronto. She died of Alzheimer's disease on March 4, 2008, in Toronto. She was 89. Predeceased by her husband, J. Roby KIDD, she is survived by her children: Bruce, Ross, Alice, David and Dorothy. She is also survived by eight grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHANAHAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-04-24 published
Doctor helped pioneer Canadian system of Well Baby Clinics
Graduating in 1938, she was expected to join a physician-driven approach to infant health inspired by the example of the famous Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe. Instead, she preferred adult patients
By Noreen SHANAHAN, Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S8
Toronto -- Early on as a physician, Elspie SHAVER found herself untangling stethoscopes from the clutch of curious infants. Back then, she wasn't given much choice in terms of where to practise. She was a woman doctor. Ergo, she'd work with mothers and babies - what could be more natural? So off she went to tend the growing families that attended a Well Baby Clinic in an East Toronto neighbourhood.
The history of Canada's Well Baby Clinics is often overlooked, but the work of those who staffed these centres, particularly a cadre of public health nurses (doctors worked there only one afternoon a week) shows an extraordinary effort to stem alarming rates of infant and child mortality. Most clinics were closed by the 1960s but variations exist today, mostly in rural or remote communities.
Seventy years ago, the clinics were frequented by poor women. After the Second World War, many of Doctor SHAVER's patients were among the 48,000 war brides who immigrated to Canada. According to Madeline SMILLIE, a nurse who worked with her at a clinic at Kew Gardens on Queen Street in Toronto, their facility experienced an influx of pregnant women and their small children, sometimes 90 women and twice that many children in one afternoon.
Children were immunized against smallpox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, whooping cough, typhoid, tuberculosis, infantile paralysis and cerebrospinal meningitis. The clinic was typically staffed by four public health nurses who kept things going and handed out information, plus a couple of volunteers who helped calm anxious children. Doctor SHAVER did examinations once a week. The history of the clinics also includes plenty of mother-blaming. In those days, the business of babies and health care was a scientific matter, and professionals could be highly critical of what they considered to be ignorant and neglectful parents, primarily mothers.
Historian Cynthia COMACCHIO of Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, studied Ontario's Well Baby Clinics and described their philosophy. "This doctor-designed educational crusade called for the creation of a new, improved, scientific mother, a thoroughly modern mother befitting the new industrial order," she said. "Modern motherhood was infused with the spirit of industry, with its unrelenting demands for regularity, scheduling, systematization, discipline, and productivity."
The birth of Canada's most famous little girls, the Dionne quintuplets, probably added to the highly regimented, doctor-driven approach to raising children. During their early years, the quints were accommodated in a purpose-built hospital compound under the care of Doctor Allan Roy Dafoe, who had delivered them.
To Ms. SMILLIE, Doctor SHAVER was a rare kind of doctor. What made her unusual was not so much that she was a woman, but rather that she spent time actually listening to the mothers as their babies fidgeted on their laps. "The patient wasn't in and out in 10 minutes, that's for sure. She got to know them better from spending more time with them."
Dr. SHAVER was also atypical in another respect. Back then, no doubt due to the sometimes patronizing attitudes of doctors in these clinics, it was out of the ordinary for nurses and doctors to get along well. But Doctor SHAVER and Ms. SMILLIE quickly became Friends and remained so for the next 60 years.
Dr. SHAVER spent her early years in Brampton, Ontario where she lived with her father, Lemen HALNAN, and her mother, Elspie HALNAN, until the family moved to Stratford, Ontario, when she was 9. She was a rough-and-tumble girl who preferred climbing trees and skating on the Avon River to puttering in the kitchen or playing with dolls. "She wasn't terrible domesticated," said Ms. SMILLIE, although she did recall a story about her friend shocking the community by winning a pie-baking contest in high school.
Her schoolteacher father had great expectations for his only child. He steered her toward a future as a physician from an early age, insisting that she excel in math and sciences and not fool around with her future. But his ambition for her didn't always match her ambition for herself. It was a perplexing and unusual contradiction. On one hand, he encouraged his daughter to pursue non-traditional women's work, while on the other, he gave her little freedom of choice and pressured her relentlessly in the worst patriarchal manner.
In 1930, very much on schedule and with excellent grades, she moved to the big city to begin pre-med studies at the University of Toronto. But about a month later, purely by chance, her father learned that she had gone behind his back and instead registered in pre-law. In a rage, he caught a train and rushed to Toronto, where he yanked her out of the program. He presented her with two choices: Either go to medical school and become a doctor, or return with him to Stratford and attend teacher's college.
"In the end, she went where she should have and she learned to love it," said Ms. SMILLIE. "So I don't know what she was thinking when she thought of law. In my opinion, she was a much better physician than she would have been a lawyer."
Dr. SHAVER graduated from medical school in 1938. In that year's graduation ceremony, there were 110 men and eight women. In the audience sat her deeply proud father. He died the following year.
By then, however, another man had entered her life. Some time between the demands of studying and satisfying her father's dreams, Dr. SHAVER found herself at a university dance in the arms of Victor SHAVER, who at 6 foot 4, was a tall match for her own 5-foot-10 stature.
Romance bloomed and they were married in 1940, soon after the outbreak of the Second World War. According to Ms. SMILLIE, Mr. SHAVER always believed it was his wife's careful attention to his heart (he had been born with a cardiac defect) that he managed to live so well. He became a high-school teacher and later a principal.
Dr. SHAVER interned at Saint_Joseph's Hospital in Toronto and spent a year at Women's College Hospital before going to work at the Well Baby Clinic. While doing her weekly clinic shifts, she also began a 14-year career as an anesthetist at the Toronto East General Hospital. Speculating about what it might have been like for a woman doctor in those days, Prof. COMACCHIO said the systemic challenges would have been stupendous, particularly at the Well Baby Clinic. On top of the animosity frequently experienced between nurses and attending physicians, where the doctors tended to demand subordination and obedience from both nurses and young mothers, Doctor SHAVER would have likely encountered another kind of complication.
"Women doctors had to take particular care not to 'over-identify' with women nurses," she wrote. "… Their gender made them 'inferior' to their male colleagues, while their profession made them 'superior' to the nurses… women doctors probably had to step very carefully so as to keep the professional hierarchy intact while also avoiding the nurses."
All the while, Doctor SHAVER developed a private practice. As truth would have it, Doctor SHAVER preferred adults over children and spent the rest of her 50-year career growing old alongside her patients. "In those days, the general public was not too familiar with female physicians. They weren't exactly rushing to them&hellip It took a long time [for Doctor SHAVER] to build up a practice."
Eventually, Doctor SHAVER worked out of her central Toronto home. In the late 1960s, Doctor SHAVER and her husband bought a second home in Brampton, where they spent weekends. In 1972, she turned 65 and spent the next 15 years working part time. But, said Ms. SMILLIE, she was never far from her doctor's bag - she left many a dinner party to make a house call.
Her good friend, Paddy Silverthorne, met Doctor SHAVER in 1983 at the Brampton Business and Professional Women's Club, where both women were members. Ms. Silverthorne was working for American Motors, while Doctor SHAVER was still working part time as a physician. By then, she was in her early 70s and continued to maintain a devoted core of patients.
"I valued Elspie's intellect and knowledge as far as medicine was concerned," Ms. Silverthorne said. "I felt that she had forgotten more than most of the medical profession had ever learned."
In 1995, Victor SHAVER died 56 years after their first dance together. They had no children, even though Doctor SHAVER had worked with hundreds of youngsters. "She was not gung ho on children," said Ms. SMILLIE.
What Doctor SHAVER really enjoyed was the chance to whip her Friends in a game of bridge or a round of golf, or to take long, slow scenic drives to Niagara Falls or to Florida.
Elspie SHAVER was born Elspie Roberta HALNAN on May 22, 1912, in Brampton, Ontario She died of natural causes on February 18, 2008, at Woodhall Park Specialty Care in Brampton. She was 95. She left no immediate survivors.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHANAHAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-04-30 published
Rebellious writer returned from Paris and helped install French in Toronto schools
Raised on the Sawdust Trail, he learned oratory from his bishop father but strayed far from his religious roots
By Noreen SHANAHAN, Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S8
Toronto -- When Clayton DERSTINE was 9, he joined his father on the Sawdust Trail, a trek across the Deep South made by Christian evangelists during the Depression. C.F. DERSTINE, a Mennonite bishop from Kitchener, Ontario, headlined for Billy Graham while his son ran errands inside the crowded tents. Clay listened to his father preach to hardbitten farmers, sometimes for up to five hours at a time, and learned some of his oratory skills.
Years later, Mr. DERSTINE put those skills to work in a campaign of his own - an effort to have French-language education taught in Toronto's public schools. In the process, he discovered a style of proselytizing much more to his liking.
Mr. DERSTINE helped create the first French public school in Toronto. He also chaired the Toronto Board of Education's French language advisory committee, was instrumental in creating the Francophone Educational Planning Council for the Toronto Region, and co-ordinated the Ontario Coalition for Language Rights. The impact of his vision and the breadth of his labour is still felt in several Toronto communities.
Clayton DERSTINE was the oldest child born to Bishop DERSTINE's Canadian family and Mary Elizabeth KOLB. It was his father's second family - he had previously had three children with a first wife in Pennsylvania. His mother kept strictly to her tasks at the church but later in life was sometimes seen loosening her kerchief and cruising down the streets of Kitchener in a black car. Clayton was a bright boy but couldn't keep his mind on his lessons. He slid into all kinds of mischief - a rough beginning for a boy whose father had penned well-thumbed sermons with the titles "The path to noble manhood" and "Hell's playground: theatres and movies."
During Bishop DERSTINE's revival meetings, one of Clay's jobs was to lean across a five-foot wooden scroll and wind it along, displaying the images as his father told the Mennonite history of the world. After the meetings, devout women who had stood in the hot sun all day prepared supper for them, sometimes dripping sweat into the mashed potatoes. Clay didn't like that too much - he politely asked for a couple of boiled eggs and peeled the shells himself. A rebel from the start, he continued on this path and later exhibited some particularly curious eccentricities, drawing him far from his rural, religious roots.
He was a football hero during high school, a force to be feared on the field. But he was a bookish jock, preferring Dickens and Descartes over retelling stories from the game. His yearbook included comments about his tackling and running, as well as how he tended to "sling around a mean vocabulary."
In 1949, after graduating from Waterloo Lutheran University (later Wilfred Laurier) with a degree in English literature, he went to graduate school at the University of Toronto, studying under Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan. He spent hours at the Royal York Hotel's King Cole Room, discussing great shifts in intellectual thought with his mentors and fellow protégés. These conversations became a launching pad for him as a thinker and a writer. His problem was that his intellect and ambition never quite met up with a solid body of discipline. As a writer, he was often mired in esoteric dreaming. He dropped out of school in 1951 and looked for the cheapest route to Paris.
For the next seven years, he lived in a tiny top-floor garret with a view of Notre Dame, no doubt aware of the cliché but succumbing to its charms regardless. He surrounded himself with Scotch, cigarettes and a steady supply of black notebooks, in which he inked his impressions of the city. If he wasn't in his room writing, he was in cafés discovering the particular flavours of French society, and sometimes sponging work off his new Friends. He was an office boy for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for a few years, then hired to do translations. If the French words didn't come easily enough, he'd pop into Café de Flore on Boulevard Saint-Germain to swallow un petit jaune (pastis) and ask someone to help fill in the blanks.
During this period, he dated Mariel CLARMONT, a Parisian he met in one of the cafés. She gave birth to their daughter, Julie, just before he returned to Canada in 1958. Mr. DERSTINE held Julie at birth but then did not see her again until she turned 21, by agreement with Mariel.
In the meantime, Mr. DERSTINE returned home to life in the basement of his parents' Kitchener home. It wasn't long before he met and fell in love with Joyce CARTER, a young reporter at the Record newspaper. The couple moved to Toronto, where Ms. CARTER went to work for The Globe and Mail. After they had lived together for a few years, they were married by Bishop DERSTINE in their living room, his hands shaking so much from Parkinson's disease that he could hardly hold the Bible. His son reached out and took his father's hand to steady it.
In 1965, their son Dirk was born and Mr. DERSTINE became a stay-at-home father, a rarity then. He also worked as a freelancer, consulting with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on a series about Mennonite history and writing book reviews for The Globe. He also kept busy working on Treegodspace, a memoir loosely based on his Paris notebooks.
"This book is written mostly either from a sofa just inside the window, or from a canvas chaise, shuffled regularly to follow the sun's patches across the lawn. If it's 3 p.m. I'm beside the lilies," he wrote. In this dense, impressionistic book, Mr. DERSTINE embarked on a journey to see where he would wind up - as he put it, "To see the macrocosm in the microcosm."
He was deeply committed to his writing project and continued, season after season, pumping out the words, certain that he'd eventually find an appreciative audience. He once left the manuscript on Dennis Lee's doorstep, hoping the Toronto writer would find it a good home. But after repeated rejections from publishers, Mr. DERSTINE mourned for a while, then bounced back with a new vigour for an old passion: the French language.
Inspired by Pierre Trudeau's move toward bilingualism and multiculturalism, Mr. DERSTINE also believed strongly in Canadians speaking both official languages. But during the late 1970s, Toronto students could immerse themselves in French only at expensive private schools or through the separate school system.
Mr. DERSTINE set about finding a more inclusive solution. In 1972, he helped create the first French public school in Toronto, École Gabrielle-Roy, named after the Manitoba writer. Five years later, Mr. DERSTINE was involved in forming a French secondary-school module at Jarvis Collegiate. Beginning in 1977, he served for eight years as vice-chair and then chair of the French Language Advisory Committee at the Toronto School Board.
"Clay was one of those unique individuals," said Tony SILIPO, a trustee on the Toronto School Board in the early 1990s and another member of the committee. "As an anglophone parent, he was one of the most fervent proponents of French-language education in the city. He lived it. He believed in it so strongly."
According to Pat Case, who also served on the board, Mr. DERSTINE was a strong proponent of multiculturalism who threw in his lot with the other minority communities seeking recognition to "come in from the margins." French wasn't just for Quebeckers, he understood, but for immigrants from countries such as Haiti, Senegal and the Ivory Coast.
In the late 1980s, the paradigm shifted. French school boards replaced the advisory board; Mr. DERSTINE served on the new body until he was defeated at the polls in 1992. From that point on, his world mostly consisted of life in a West Toronto neighbourhood, where neighbours would spot him reading the morning paper on his front porch or walking his dog with a crusty baguette tucked under his arm.
Clayton DERSTINE was born July 1, 1928, in Kitchener, Ontario He died March 21, 2008, in Toronto after a stroke. He was 79. He is survived by wife, Joyce CARTER, and children Dirk DERSTINE, of Toronto, and Julie SAAVEDRA, of Paris.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHANAHAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-05-21 published
She championed the environment and defeated the 'Harvard Mouse'
Lawyer took on forestry giants to secure sustainable growth and successfully argued against a powerful initiative by the pharmaceutical industry to patent a genetically altered rodent
By Noreen SHANAHAN, Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S10
Toronto -- Michelle SWENARCHUK was a public intellectual. As executive director of the Canadian Environmental Law Association she fought for sustainable development in Northern Ontario's forests. Her work and vision contributed to Canada's most positive environmental footprints, and there is some suggestion that it was she who coined the phrase "environmental crisis."
She also led a successful intervention in the famed Harvard Mouse Case, in which the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on whether medical researchers could patent higher life forms. She participated in negotiations and consultations regarding international laws at the World Trade Organization, the Organization of Economic Development, the International Labour Organization and the North American Commission for Environmental Co-operation.
Michelle SWENARCHUK was the youngest of three children born into a Ukrainian family in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan. As a child, she liked to pedal her bicycle kilometres out of town just for sheer joy and the view of an expanding sky. Her hometown, which straddles the Alberta-Saskatchewan border, had five or six stores, a dragged-down hotel and a handful of grain elevators. Half the population was German Mennonite, the other half English. Including the SWENARCHUKs, there were three Ukrainian families.
Everything changed when, as a teenager, she moved with the rest of her family to nearby Saskatoon. Her world expanded to included antiwar protests, draft dodgers and an emerging social consciousness. Her mother's work as a social worker likely also influenced her, for she was briefly tempted to enter the same profession.
After getting her B.A. in English literature at the University of Saskatchewan, she worked as a de facto social worker in rural Saskatchewan but soon realized that becoming a lawyer would be a more effective career path. She moved to Toronto in the early 1970s to attend Osgoode Hall Law School. There, she found that just 10 per cent of the student body was female, with an even smaller number specializing in labour law, as she did. She was called to the bar in 1976 and opened a practice with Judith McCORMACK, a fellow graduate.
In the early days, she worked primarily with a group of small Canadian unions fighting for the rights of immigrant women, many of whom toiled in the most appalling sweatshop conditions or as building cleaners. The unions were affiliated with the Confederation of Canadian Unions, founded in 1969 by Quebec labour activists Madeleine Parent and Kent Rowley, and were often labelled as communist.
Choosing to work for them wasn't generally thought to be a brilliant career move. "Of course this wasn't exactly high-paying work - or, in some cases, paying work at all," recalled Ms. McCORMACK.
The firm was audited by Revenue Canada twice in the early days. When she asked the auditor why, he told them that they had made so little money they figured the firm must have been a front for a money-laundering operation. "This was a bit like adding insult to penury," said Ms. McCORMACK.
In 1979, Ms. SWENARCHUK moved into a more lucrative position as counsel to the Canadian Union of Professional and Technical Employees. One of her responsibilities was representing civil aviation inspectors at a Royal Commission on aviation safety. Next, she took a position with the Federation of Women's Teachers Associations of Ontario, working on collective bargaining, education and equity policies. In the late 1970s, she joined the National Action Committee on the Status of Women as a member of the employment committee. She became an executive member in 1982 and served under the presidency of Doris Anderson.
But the bonds of sisterhood were sometimes a challenge to negotiate. When Ms. Anderson was National Action Committee president, she confided to fellow executive board members that she didn't want to go to any meetings "where women held hands or hummed." Ms. SWENARCHUK understood this timidity, agreed, and on all accounts the two women shared a great deal of non-hand-holding success. Ms. SWENARCHUK's three strongest mentors were Ms. Parent, Ms. Anderson and research physicist Ursula Franklin. In 2006, she wrote the forward to The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map.
The late 1980s and early 1990s presented Ms. SWENARCHUK with two hugely significant challenges. They were both personal and professional. First, her daughter Larissa was born in Toronto in 1988; second, after having served a few years as chief counsel to Canadian Environmental Law Association, she became the executive director in 1991. Suddenly, at the same time she was knee deep in diapers, she was also on the nightly news warning people about the state of the environment.
"I remember the first time I laid eyes on Michelle SWENARCHUK," said Karen Clark, senior policy co-ordinator for the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. "She was on television saying things that I had never heard anybody say before. I remember the phrase, 'We're in the middle of an environmental crisis.' She was using that kind of very strong language when very few people were talking like that."
Canadian Environmental Law Association is funded by the Ontario legal aid plan with a mandate to represent environmental groups and low-income individuals affected by environmental problems. In the 1980s, Canadian Environmental Law Association represented a coalition of Northern Ontario environmental groups called Forests for Tomorrow at a landmark hearing into Ontario's timber management program. It was probably the biggest such hearing in Canadian history, with 440 separate hearings covering a four-year period.
"It was mind-boggling - and mind numbing - said Canadian Environmental Law Association's Rick LINDGREN. "And yet, with Michelle as our fearless lead counsel, somehow we survived the ordeal and… achieved some real progress."
Attending the hearings was a gruelling ordeal. Every Monday, Mr. LINDGREN and Ms. SWENARCHUK would fly out of Toronto early in the morning, drop baby Larissa off at Thunder Bay daycare, spend the day at the hearing, pick up Larissa and eat dinner at the house they had rented for the duration. After the dishes were done, Ms. SWENARCHUK would play with her daughter, tell her stories and put her to bed. Then she'd work until the wee hours reading evidence and preparing cross-examination for the next day.
In a Toronto Star column in 1989, Ms. Anderson described one plane ride where 16-month-old Larissa accidentally kicked over the breakfast tray, spraying scrambled egg across the lap of her mother's blue suit. "Two hours later, after a quick clean-up, [Ms. SWENARCHUK] was cross-examining a top government official."
In the end, they got what Forests for Tomorrow wanted: sustainable forestry.
While Ms. SWENARCHUK also served as an advocate for women, trade unionists, aboriginals and immigrant workers, her greatest success - and greatest notoriety - occurred when she argued the Harvard Mouse case at the Supreme Court of Canada. According to Mr. LINDGREN, the matter had arrived at Canadian Environmental Law Association's doorstep just at a time when the struggle for environmental protection was becoming more complex. In addition to being engaged in site-specific battles over such things as dumps, quarries and incinerators, they were becoming increasingly involved in international "mega-cases."
The Harvard rodent was just such a case. Around that time, scientists at Harvard University had modified mice by inserting a gene that caused them to develop cancer. They acquired a patent for the mouse that extended to all non-human life forms. In the process, they applied for a patent in Canada and the resulting litigation eventually ended up before the Supreme Court. At the proceedings, Canadian Environmental Law Association represented itself and six other public-interest groups, including the Canadian Council of Churches, Greenpeace of Canada and the Sierra Club of Canada. In 2002, the court ruled that higher life forms could not be patented in Canada.
It was a staggering success, said Ms. Clark. "For Michelle to have beaten the pharmaceutical industry, that was a signal victory and the organizing point around her life and her work."
It also lay at the root of her beliefs about justice, she said. "It works for you whether you're rich or you're poor, that's what the rule of law is. Michelle believed that very strongly&hellip that was the fight that she was always fighting."
In 2004, Ms. SWENARCHUK was awarded the Law Society of Upper Canada medal for outstanding contributions.
Michelle SWENARCHUK was born in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, on October 30, 1948. She died of cancer at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto on February 27, 2008. She was 59. She leaves daughter Larissa SWENARCHUK, brother Lauren SWENARCHUK, sister Bonnie ZWACK and parents Michael and Janet SWENARCHUK.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHANAHAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-06-12 published
Rising star of Canadian stage resisted the lure of Hollywood
Actress who got her start fronting a wartime Rinso Revue road show, and was voted 'Miss Radio,' performed at Toronto's legendary Crest Theatre and starred opposite the likes of Lorne Greene
By Noreen SHANAHAN, Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S9
Toronto -- Mona O'HEARN was an iconic forties actress who excited audiences and showed great promise on the Canadian stage. Today she is all but forgotten. What's left of her story lies in a single suitcase with a broken clasp.
The suitcase, which recently emerged from storage, holds decades of theatre programs, press clippings, fan letters and publicity shots. It also contains obituaries marking the loss of such Friends as Murray Davis and Mavor Moore, fellow thespians with whom she shared a stage, a script or a sound studio.
The brittle, yellow newsprint, folded long ago by her hands, scattered dust as it was opened. Here's Ms. O'Hearn, circa 1944: "My real ambition is the stage, but I think I'd like radio, if I could get a chance. Meanwhile, I'm plugging at a typewriter, holding down a stenographic job I don't care for." And here's a clipping from a few years later, "Meet Mona O'Hearn… devastating proof that Toronto girls are yum-yum!"
But in her life and career there was often a great divide between simple ambition and "yum-yum." She was a shrewd, intelligent woman and a strong advocate of Canadian theatre. Although tempted by actor Friends Leslie Nielson and Lorne Greene to head south to Hollywood, she opted to remain behind to work at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Toronto's Crest Theatre, as well as supporting the fledgling Canadian Actor's Equity Association. "She's enthusiastic in defence of the underdog in matters of social, racial and political ideas," reads another clipping. "One of her pet themes is a National Theatre for Canada."
Mona O'HEARN grew up in Toronto during the thick of the Depression. After her father, Tom O'HEARN, left home early each day to work as a sign painter, Mona practised monologues in front of the hall mirror and gave the rest of her family hell for getting in her way. She was an angry, opinioned young woman during a time when success required social conformity and the right shade of lipstick. She often locked horns with her mother and sassed her siblings, while her father quietly tended homing pigeons in the back yard. "She was always a rebel," reflected her brother, Ray O'HEARN, 60 years later.
Ms. O'HEARN began acting at East York Collegiate Institute on Cosburn Avenue, and in amateur productions. In 1940, after graduating from high school, pressures to get a desk job meant life with a Dictaphone rather than a microphone. But her ambition soon lifted her out of that rut. She took up modelling between secretarial gigs and, times being what they were for beautiful young women, she ended up signing her name on some pretty bizarre contracts, such as posing for steamy 10-cent comic covers with titles such as: "Murder - Straight Ahead" and "Fatally Yours." Another time, due to a shortage of manpower during the Second World War, she glued on a thick white beard and played Santa Claus for the cameras. "This is how Santa is transformed into a pin-up girl," the caption said.
In 1942, she served as emcee and flashed some thigh with the Rinso Revue, a travelling road show sponsored by a detergent manufacturer that billed her as an expert in domestic science. "This-is-the-way-to-wash-your-clothes was a necessary part of her performance," commented a Medicine Hat reporter. "But she made of the work-a-day, soap-and-water part of her 'turn,' a lively adventure." She won the dubious honour of being named by a shipload of sailors as "the girl they'd most like to stand beside the microphone with."
Although unmarried at this point and reputedly a terrible cook, her wifely persona landed more acting jobs in popular Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio dramas, including playing opposite John Drainie in the long-running serial John and Judy. She also starred in Soldier's Wife, Canada's top-rated daytime program. According to one reviewer, she learned to be a "tearful little expert" in such roles. "Just to please the feminine members of the listening audience."
It's also possible that her tears expressed an ache for more serious roles. She later acted in a radio dramatization of Mazo De la Roche's The Building of Jalna, catapulting both herself and the novelist to greater fame. "I expect more of you as an actress," said Ms. De la Roche at the time.
In 1946, Ms. O'HEARN won "Miss Radio," a nationwide popularity contest for Canadian radio artists. She was noted queen of the airwaves during a time when families sat around the voice box or read one of the numerous radio magazines. With this success under her belt, she shifted into more theatre. In 1948, she and Lorne Greene co-starred in Dora Mavor Moore's production of Joan of Lorraine, at the Royal Ontario Museum Theatre, a role earlier made famous on Broadway by Ingrid Bergman.
"Sadly, career pressures took their toll on Ms. O'HEARN around this time," said her friend and colleague, Laddie Dennis. "To alleviate stress, she spent afternoons sipping cocktails at the Celebrity Club on Jarvis Street, conveniently located across from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation building.
It was a habit that soon developed, she added. "[Drinking] was the other half of your life. There was a tension that came with this kind of a career… the first thing you'd think about was 'let's all go have a drink.' "
In 1949, realizing she was an alcoholic, Ms. O'HEARN began sobering up and married Ed PARKER, a journalist from Winnipeg who fell in love with her during an interview for the Montreal Star, and who would later found the Ryerson School of Journalism in Toronto.
Within a year or two, her real life sharply contradicted her acting performances. Far from being a domestic wizard, she found the roles of marriage and motherhood beyond her scope. Within days of the birth of her son, Josh, in 1951, she had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for several months.
"Her career diminished after I was born," said Mr. PARKER. " She drank until my birth and then, because she wasn't self-medicating, she started having breakdowns." Mr. PARKER has few good early memories of his mother. His parents split up when he was 2 and he never lived with her. Ms. O'HEARN was diagnosed with a manic-depressive disorder and struggled with the condition for the rest of her life.
Although she was still deeply loved and respected by a score of Friends and colleagues, Ms. O'HEARN continued to create havoc in personal relationships. Ms. Dennis recalled asking her to be maid of honour at her 1949 wedding. Ms. O'HEARN arrived an hour late. "There she was, white-gloved, flowered hat, and late&hellip an example of the unpredictable and charming Mona O'HEARN."
Meanwhile, against all odds, Ms. O'HEARN's career did not fade away altogether. In fact, it prospered during the 1950s and 1960s. She joined up with Mr. Drainie in a 1951 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio drama of W.O. Mitchell's Jake and The Kid, featuring stories set on a Saskatchewan farm. And then, in 1953, she once again co-starred with Lorne Greene at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in The Big Leap, a play about a man who tipped himself over Niagara Falls in a barrel. In 1959, she acted with Martha Henry in Kaufman and Hart's You Can't Take It With You at the Crest Theatre, a venue that had marked the beginnings of indigenous commercial theatre in Canada when it opened five years earlier.
One of her most memorable roles was in Sean O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars. Staged by Equity Showcase Theatre at Toronto's historic Arts and Letters Club in 1960, and produced by Ms. O'HEARN, it told the story of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin.
On opening night, however, the greatest scene occurred offstage. Ms. O'HEARN's young son watched his mother's performance, but unfortunately nobody had adequately warned him that she would be shot. When he saw blood pool around her body, he became inconsolable. "I was 9 and to me that translated into a real death," recalled Mr. PARKER. "I flipped out."
In the seventies, less work began to come her way. Although she continued to perform in small television roles and on stage as late as 1993, most of her time was spent as a voice and drama instructor.
Meanwhile, she and her son always had a fraught relationship that didn't improve with age. Although Mr. PARKER recognized how she was "sharp as a tack," he knew she poisoned many social environments and cost them both a great deal of grief. Even late in her life, she was tossed out of retirement homes because she was unable to get along with other residents. Mr. PARKER once told her that she had to start treating people nicely.
"I'm a tough businesswoman," she responded. "I can't change just like that."
"Mom," he said. "You are a great actress. Embrace the role!"
In 1996, Ms. O'HEARN moved into Toronto's Performing Arts Lodge in Toronto, a residence that provides residential facilities for senior or disadvantaged people who made their careers on the stage or before the camera. There, she mingled with other actors with whom she had once shared the limelight, and Friendships developed. "She had the ability to call you darlin' - just once - and you'd melt," said a friend.
Mona O'HEARN was born April 18, 1922, in Toronto. She died on March 6, 2008, in Toronto of emphysema. She was 85. She is survived by her son, Josh PARKER; her grandchildren Yvonne, Noah, Tatiana, and Edan; her brothers Roy and Jim O'HEARN; and her sisters Lillian DURNHAN, and Joan LADOCEUR.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHANAHAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-07-08 published
Successful filmmaker at National Film Board turned to a life of crime writing
He worked on documentaries and television programs, and got to know the Beatles and Bob Dylan, but longed to write fiction. The result was award-winning short stories and a bidding war over a first novel
By Noreen SHANAHAN, Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S8
Toronto -- Film producer and record-label publicist Dennis MURPHY worked among stars, but he wasn't dazzled by them. His true ambition was to write and publish Canadian crime fiction, and it was a dream to which he held firm.
Writing fiction and doing his own thing was always on his mind, even while working for Elektra Records and meeting the likes of Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Jim Morrison and the Beatles. The same could be said of his time at the National Film Board, where he had a hand in such documentaries and television programs as Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, Manufacturing Consent and a portrait of the late Oscar Peterson titled In the Key of Oscar.
In Canada, Mr. MURPHY's work appeared on TVOntario, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Global, History Television and The Discovery Network. In the United States, it was seen on Court TV, National Geographic and PBS. In 1990, he was appointed executive producer of National Film Board's Studio C in Montreal. A year later, he became director of National Film Board's flagship Ontario Centre, executive producing more than 100 documentary films. "Dennis was brilliant at everything he tried," said friend Douglas McARTHUR, a retired Globe and Mail reporter. "He had a zest for life and Irish whisky."
Within a few short years of publishing crime fiction in such notable places as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Magazine and Storyteller Magazine, he became one of Canada's leading crime writers. Dead in the Water, a fictionalized account of the death of painter Tom Thomson, won the Bloody Words crime writers' award and Storyteller's annual Best Canadian Short Story prize, and was short-listed for a Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award.
In 2005, he won the Storyteller prize for the second year running with Death of a Drystone Wall, and with it scored one of two nominations for that year's Arthur Ellis Short Story award. The other nomination was for Sound of Silence. A year later, he won the 2006 short story prize with Fuzzy Wuzzy, originally published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
After a bidding war between two publishers, Mr. MURPHY signed a contract last March with Harper-Collins Canada for his novel Darkness at the Break of Noon. He borrowed the title from a Bob Dylan lyric, so clearly some of the stars he had worked with mattered to him more than he let on.
Dennis MURPHY grew up in Dundas, Ontario, loving the life of a small-town boy. But when he was 14, darkness descended after his 45-year-old father, Robert MURPHY, died of a heart attack. Dennis never got over the loss and always feared he, too, would die young. This fear may have explained why he achieved so much during his life.
In 1967, Mr. MURPHY graduated from McMaster University in Hamilton with a bachelor of arts in Irish literature. He was editor of the school paper, a drummer in a rock band and in love with all things Dylan. Bored one Christmastime, Mr. MURPHY convinced a group of Friends to go door-to-door "Dylan-ing." They greeted people on their doorsteps with Blowin' in the Wind instead of Come Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.
After graduation, he was offered a teaching job in Ireland but moved instead to New York, where he threw himself into the music business. In 1971, he became the East Coast head of audio engineering with Elektra Records, but he soon returned to Canada and established Sundog Productions, based in Toronto and Vancouver. He produced albums for singers Shirley Eikhard, Christopher Kearney, Ron Nigrini and others. In 1976, he worked at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as director of Ninety Minutes Live, hosted by Peter Gzowski. He also worked on Take 30 and The Final Edition. As a highly successful freelancer, Mr. MURPHY's career took off in all directions, resulting in a curriculum vitae more than 20 pages long.
"Whatever Dennis did, he would just completely obsess about it, do everything he could, research it and just exhaust the subject and then move on to something else," said his wife, Joanna KUBICKI. "He lived for writing. When he wasn't writing, you could see him, the wheels were spinning - he was creating stories in his head."
Of all the genres, it was crime writing that appealed to him most, she said. Several filing cabinets bulging with stories were a testament to that.
Ms. KUBICKI met Mr. MURPHY at TVO in 1980. She was working in the arts department and he was freelancing. They came together over shared misery, commiserating about the abrupt ends to their previous relationships. He had a white dog; she had a white cat. Neither could find a place to rent, so they bought a house together in Toronto's Riverdale neighbourhood. It worked out so well that they married a couple of years later. In 1983, the circle was completed with the birth of their son, Adam.
Around that time, Mr. MURPHY began longing to return to the kind of small-town pleasures he knew as a child and to raise Adam in some place similar. He convinced Ms. KUBICKI to move to an old Victorian house in Stouffville, Ontario He not only excelled at his work but he was also an impressive community member. He became a scout leader, played on a baseball team, organized a music festival and was appointed to the Stouffville parks and recreation advisory board.
He started his own television production company, Anagraph Inc. He did some of his best thinking on the backed-up Don Valley Parkway while commuting to Toronto. But, true to form, he soon grew bored took a job in 1990 with the National Film Board in Montreal. The family lived in Hudson, Quebec, during the famous Mohawk land dispute in Oka, just across the river. Traffic jams were soon replaced with tanks on Main Street and disturbing newscasts. Out of this, Mr. MURPHY made the documentary Acts of Defiance, in support of land-rights issues.
The National Film Board transferred him to Toronto and the family moved back into their house in Stouffville. There, he continued quietly writing. In 1992, Ms. KUBICKI's longing to live in Toronto landed them in a house in the Beaches neighbourhood and an introduction, for Mr. MURPHY, to a gathering of writers at The Feathers pub on Kingston Road. He decided to get serious, and joined Crime Writers of Canada.
He also decided to try his hand at travel writing, and contacted his friend Mr. McARTHUR, who was then acting travel editor at The Globe. He submitted an account of his quest to find the perfect omelette pan in Paris.
"I thought it was really good, but I was afraid I might be prejudiced because he was a friend, so I showed it to some other editors," said Mr. McARTHUR. " They liked it too, and it ran as a travel front. The next week, I had a phone call from a professor at a journalism school somewhere in the southern U.S. He wanted to use it in his classes as an example of how to write a perfect travel story."
Toronto mystery writer Peter ROBINSON lived around the corner from Mr. MURPHY. He was also a crony at The Feathers and the two men frequently talked about crime writing over a pint or two. Mr. ROBINSON recognized his friend's passion and his excellent storytelling skills. He became a mentor to him. Around this time, Mr. MURPHY started to publish award-winning short stories, as well as starting on a book.
"The novel was his dream, and it's hard to get over the cruel irony that he should be taken away so soon after finding out that it was going to be published," Mr. ROBINSON said. "But Dennis was a polisher, a perfectionist. It was hard for him to let go of a piece of writing because he knew there was always more he could do to make it even better."
Mr. MURPHY also published a poem in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine called Final Escape.
"If a short story can be deemed a process of finite literary craft, then a poem is a word sculpture," Mr. MURPHY told Poe's Deadly Daughters, a blog for mystery aficionados. "It also elevated me instantly to the precious (to me) category of published poet, something that, as yet, has impressed no one who reads my curriculum vitae."
Scottish mystery writer Ian Rankin, who liked the poem, sent Mr. MURPHY a book that he dedicated to "the crime poet."
Mr. MURPHY, who until earlier this year taught broadcasting and film studies at Centennial College in Toronto, frequently steered his crime-writing into Canadian history. Without being preachy, the stories often packed a political punch. "I don't set out to make a bald-headed statement, just to write a story with a crime at its centre that has something to do with our world," he said. "I've been making documentary films for a long time and I suppose my feelings about issues are always there and ready (and more than willing) to be tapped."
Many of his killers were highly moral human beings who had been wronged, or who had committed crimes that readers might condone or even approve, he said. For instance, in Dead in the Water, Tom Thomson is killed by a local guide who feels his home in Algonquin Park has been stolen by "the painter" who sees only wind-bent trees and broken beaver dams. The story ends with these lines: "If I hadn't killed the painter, he'd be forgotten, too."
Darkness at the Break of Noon will be published in February.
Dennis MURPHY was born September 6, 1943, in Hamilton. He died June 15, 2008, in Toronto of lung cancer. He was 64. He is survived by his wife, Joanna KUBICKI, and their son, Adam MURPHY.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHANAHAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-07-18 published
Stelco metallurgist led a second life as an award-winning filmmaker
Steel-company lab technician produced more than 30 nature films, including Miracle of the Bees. Sometimes, 'I waited 12 hours to get a shot that lasts only 10 seconds'
By Noreen SHANAHAN, Special▲ to The Globe and Mail, Page S8
Jack CAREY had a strong affection for insects. As one of Canada's leading nature cinematographers and film producers, he sometimes spent entire nights watching the metamorphosis of a dragonfly. "I've waited 12 hours to get a shot that lasts only 10 seconds," he said.
Another time, speaking about capturing close-ups, he told The Hamilton Spectator: "I've got to be able to move in and show an aphid giving birth, where you've got a tiny animal the size of the head of a pin on a rosebush."
In the process, he was credited with filming the only existing footage of a lace-wing fly larva camouflaging itself with aphid fluff.
Mr. CAREY, whose day job was that of a metallurgist, produced more than 30 nature films, including The Monarch Butterfly Story, The Everglades, Wonders of the Hive and Success Story, a film exploring why insects are likely to inherit the Earth. His first nature film, and perhaps his best known, is The Miracle of the Bees. He filmed the documentary on the life cycle of the honey bee long before there was an environmental concern over their possible extinction. The movie was shown at Italy's National Institute of Apiculture and won highest science award at a film festival in Rome in 1958.
Mr. CAREY regarded himself as a home-grown biologist. He did most of his filming in his basement, where he had several aquariums perched on a billiard table, or in the woods a few kilometres from his ranch house in Burlington, Ontario His documentaries became a common feast for North American school children. They were also shown on David Suzuki's The Nature of Things and the American television show The Wild Kingdom. His films have been viewed by millions of people in 70 countries and have been translated into eight languages.
For a change of pace, he sometimes packed up his equipment and shot big game on wildlife reserves in India, South Africa, Kenya and Sri Lanka. While gently rocking on the back of an elephant, he focused his lens on the rare one-horned rhino, four-horned antelopes and the Asiatic lion in India's Gir Forest. Birds included wild peacocks, hoopoes, grey wagtails and golden-backed woodpeckers. His films were shown on Audubon Wildlife Theatre, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation series that ran from 1968 to 1974.
Jack CAREY hailed from Hamilton, in the shadow of a steel smelter, back before the Depression. His father, William CAREY, emigrated from England after fighting in the Boer War. He was a plasterer and his wife Mariah (RYDER) took in laundry. Jack was the youngest of five children and his big sister, Dolly, handed him his first Kodak Brownie box camera when he was 7. He remembered crawling through the bushes on his belly trying to sneak up on birds, but they always got away. When he was 15, his mother died of cancer, prompting him to put away his camera and take on more serious work. After finishing high school at Hamilton Technical Institute he took a job in the labs at Stelco, quickly working his way into the executive ranks as chief service metallurgist.
In 1932, while he was still employed at Stelco, he and his sister opened a portrait studio. They kept themselves busy shooting portraits of children and Saturday brides in flowing veils. After a while, he couldn't stand weddings, preferring woods and ponds over chapels. In the early 1950s, for a change of scene, he smuggled his camera into the steel plant. His photos were soon admired by the company's president, who commissioned Mr. CAREY to produce his first commercial documentary, Steel for Canadians, in 1952. The film Tells both the Stelco story and the process of steelmaking. Mr. CAREY said this was a challenging task, filming huge mills and molten metal.
The steel film was soon followed by the award-winning The Miracle of the Bees in 1957. The Life Cycle of the Monarch Butterfly came a few years later. His career as a nature cinematographer had fully taken flight.
During the 1960s, Mr. CAREY produced a series of documentaries called Spring Hike, Summer Hike, and Winter Hike. It told the story of two boys exploring a local pond. Although he never married or had children, Mr. CAREY was keenly interested in encouraging young people to get out of the house and muck about in murky water. "I try to make the kids say, 'Gee, I want to go out and see that for myself," he once told the Toronto Star.
His nephew Dave CAREY was one of the boys in the film. He recalls Uncle Jack hauling him out of bed at the crack of dawn on cold winter mornings to cart a big parabolic reflector - twice the size of a satellite dish - to bird feeders near Hamilton or Burlington before traffic noise would overwhelm the sounds of early-morning bird calls. He loved it.
As a member of the Hamilton Naturalists Club, Mr. CAREY often hiked the Niagara Escarpment with wildlife painter Robert BATEMAN. Mr. BATEMAN was impressed by how a Stelco executive crawled around on his hands and knees, prompting bugs to smile for the camera. Mr. CAREY became an early collector of Mr. BATEMAN's paintings and a collaboration developed between the two.
"Jack was a person of many opinions as well as good judgment," Mr. BATEMAN said. "He often made comments on paintings in progress." For instance, to paint Goshawk and Ruffled Grouse, an picture that hung over Mr. CAREY's piano for decades, Mr. BATEMAN used for reference a single frame from a CAREY film. He then added a dead grouse that had been killed on the road, and a fallen aspen to complete the realistic work. It was one of 11 BATEMAN paintings that Mr. CAREY eventually donated to the Hamilton Art Gallery.
In 1975, Mr. CAREY retired from Stelco. But instead of grabbing his golf clubs, he pocketed his passport, hoisted his equipment across his shoulder and took off for distant shores. According to a 1978 Star article, that meant Africa and the Galapagos and points in between, "to film everything from elephants to ants."
Sometimes humans - naked humans - inadvertently got in the way. One day, while filming in the woods of Ontario, he stumbled upon a nudist colony. He had his camera pointed at a nest where the mother bird had just stuffed a big dragonfly into the mouth of a tiny nestling, when a "muscular and red-faced" man suddenly began shouting: "Nobody's allowed to take pictures here!"
He soon observed the nestlings "about ready to take off at any minute like a helicopter," and calmed down, Mr. CAREY recalled.
"You don't have to go," the man said. "Keep right on shooting."
In 1979, Mr. CAREY used six motion-picture cameras, 30 different lenses, two microscopes, and time-lapse photography to painstaking film Success Story. The documentary profiled the lives of insects and suggested why the tiny creatures, so often crunched under our feet, would likely outlive the human race. He made his point by drawing on analogies to humans. For instance, he said that if a human baby gained weight in the same proportion as a young worm, it would gain several tonnes in a few months. "When they're eating leaves and things like that, wings would be a damned nuisance, so they have nice grasping legs so they can hang onto the leaves. When they change their lifestyle completely to breed, then they develop wings."
Insects will inherit the Earth, he said, because their life span is short and although they are vulnerable to predators, there are always many, many more coming down the line. In 1978, the film won a gold plaque at the Miami Film Festival and was judged the best educational film among 2,000 entries from around the world. Because of his work on Success Story, Mr. CAREY was made a fellow of Britain's Royal Photographic Society the next year.
His close-up world didn't just involve nature footage. As a collector or, some would say, a packrat, he turned part of his basement into something he dubbed the "Canada Room." Greeting visitors as they stepped through the door was a pair of stuffed lynxes, after which they stumbled on everything else. "We've found a book about the interesting habits of birds and animals that Jack wrote when he was 10," said Dave CAREY, who recently cleared away much of the material. "Also a bone from a blue whale, his grandfather's military will dated 1918, Christmas cards dated back a hundred years and a freezer full of decades-old French River blueberries."
John J. CAREY was born September 22, 1912, in Hamilton. He died June 3, 2008, in Dundas, Ontario after complications from a fall. He was 95. He is survived by several generations of nieces and nephews, many Friends and many viewers.

  S... Names     SH... Names     SHA... Names     Welcome Home

SHANAHAN - All Categories in OGSPI

SHA surnames continued to 08sha002.htm