Lisa Jennie Avedon
Educator, feminist, Holocaust survivor, grandmother. Born on Nov. 7, 1934, in Munich, Germany; died on March 2, 2015, in Toronto, of cancer, aged 80.
At 5 foot 2, Lisa Avedon was a powerhouse of personality. She had opinions about everything, and they were all shared in a strong New York accent. She had a sarcastic sense of humour, which led to many laughs, as long as you weren't on the receiving end. But along with her sometimes aggressive character was a tremendous passion and commitment to helping victims of persecution.
Lisa was arrested for the crime of being Jewish at the age of 4. Her father, a wealthy scion of Munich’s Jewish community, was suspected of moving money out of Nazi Germany and her mother was arrested to pressure him. He committed suicide and his family was set free, only to join what became known as the infamous Voyage of the Damned.
In May, 1939, the family fled Nazi Germany aboard the St. Louis, along with more than 900 other passengers, mostly Jews. Liselotte Freund, as she was then called, was the youngest refugee aboard. Denied permission to dock in Cuba, then Florida and then Canada, where Prime Minister Mackenzie King declared the situation was not a "Canadian problem," her family and a third of the refugees were finally accepted by Britain; the rest were forced back to Europe where many perished in Nazi death camps.
Lisa's family made their way to New York, where they lived in Washington Heights, a German-Jewish neighbourhood. Life was difficult as a refugee, but she dreamed of a career in architecture and in her teen years was accepted to the prestigious Bronx High School of Science (which produced eight Nobel laureates over the years). She seemed to have found a path to her dream until, just before graduation, she was told that women were rarely admitted to university architecture programs. Her first brush with sexism would fuel a lifelong career in education and the fight for gender equality.
In the early 1970s, she and her husband, Elliott Avedon, and their children, Madeline and Roger, moved to Waterloo, Ont., where Elliott had accepted a professorship at the University of Waterloo. There, Lisa's unique mix of intellectual engagement and a touch of New York attitude charmed many. She quickly landed in the forefront of feminist ranks with a significant role on the National Action Committee on the Status of Women.
Trained as an educator, with a B.A. in psychology and sociology and an M.A. in adult education, she tempered her passion for equality with pragmatism: the best way to achieve real equality for women was to empower them through education. She was instrumental in founding the Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women, a vocational education resource for women and girls. Later she served as president of CCLOW and as a delegate to the 1985 Nairobi Conference of the UN Decade for Women.
A few years after retiring in her early 60s, and moving to Sante Fe, N.M., she was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer. She returned to Toronto to be closer to family, fought the disease with everything she had, and went on to live another 15 years and enjoy life as Oma to her five grandchildren.
During this time, she spoke to many Toronto school and community groups as a Holocaust survivor and a cancer survivor, stressing the importance of a positive attitude and sense of humour in the face of adversity. Many benefited from the experiences she shared.
Lisa died during Purim, a celebration of the Bible's sharpest female hero, Esther, and the least-serious of Jewish holidays, a coincidence that surely would have made her laugh.
Madeline and Roger Avedon are Lisa’s children.