In Memoriam

Marie-Hélène Roger (1975-2004)

Marie-Hélène Roger was an active volunteer from the very beginning of the Montreal group's activities in 1999. She manned our first information booth at a nature fair, coordinated the production of our first information brochure, and in 2001 helped organize our first-ever Annual General Meeting. She was elected to the Board of Directors at that first meeting and remained with it ever since, acting during part of that time as board secretary and member of our community outreach committee.

Her most remarkable contribution however, was undoubtedly as our social quarterback. Attendance at CPAWS-sponsored events was regularly boosted by the participation of her wide circle of friends, and she was the one Board member who would pry us once in a while out of our conference rooms to gather for an 'at-home' meeting instead. Her energy and optimism were inspiring, given the time she also committed to representing Quebec at the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation - and to her own courageous struggle with that disease over the years.

One couldn't help but be amazed at her determination. She considered it nothing special arriving to take minutes of a meeting with an oxygen tank on her shoulder and a breathing tube under her nose. Marie-Helene simply shrugged it off, nearly making the rest of us forget about it too.

Still, over the past year she suffered from increasingly frequent complications, and last summer was placed on a waiting list for a lung transplant. She was at the top of that list when she died on Monday February 23rd 2004, at the age of 29.