Anita died on Sunday, August 30, 2015 in Helsingborg, Sweden at the age of 75.  The following are excerpts from an email obituary sent out by her husband Michael and sons Jason and Byron.

As many of you know, the final years have been difficult for us, Anita and Michael most of all. In his inimitable, almost superhuman way, simultaneously saintly and hawk-like, by hook or by disarming good will and humour, dad made sure Anita got the kind of love and care that she herself could not help but bestow upon those who crossed her worldly path.

A recently formed local band of Helsingborgian friends, generous in spirit and fierce in loyalty, have helped to make this possible, offering absolutely indespensable support to all of us, mom and dad in particular.  Regular telephone and facetime contact with Anita’s sister Maureen, and many other relatives and close friends as far as California, BC, and Australia was (and is!) just as critical.

These final years have done nothing to diminish the power of Anita’s noble and determined lifetime presence, her kindness, her skepticism and humour, her capacity to marry form with function in any interior space thrown in her direction, her relentless determination to see a project to completion, her smile. Anita’s thirst for knowledge and her perseverance in satisfying this thirst were both noteworthy and necessary given her globetrotting existence, evident in the number of degrees awarded and the number of universities attended to secure them! But her urge to probe and question the status quo and test the common sense of the day were also manifest. Her legal-constitutional struggles of the late 1980s and early 1990s to secure gender equality in the Canadian courts awakened the political animal in Anita. These struggles were successful, but they were tough, and through them Anita came to see clearly the critical role political mobilization and collective action can and should play in forging a better life on this earth.

Anita’s boundless curiosity helped craft a rich tapestry of life experiences, and the memories you have shared with us are testament to this fact. Your messages and phone calls have been a great source of comfort and strength for us, often surprising us with stories about Anita and bringing to life aspects of her personality we were not aware of, buoying us up during this period of loss.