canadian HIV/Aids activist june callwood dies at 82

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Activist Callwood dies at 82

Catherine Dunphy and Debra Black
toronto star Staff Reporters
Apr 14, 2007 09:32 AM

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/203138

“I’m okay, I’m 82 years old for heaven’s sake. Dust to dust is the way it ought to be. The death of the young is inexcusable.”

During one of her last visits to Casey House, the AIDS hospice she helped found that is named after her late son, June Callwood noticed that the place felt tired and that there was a 60-watt bulb in the ceiling of the lounge. No one could sit there and read under that light, she fretted.

Friends rallied, the hospice’s original interior designer was contacted, and before she died Callwood saw photos of a sparkling, repainted hospice, replete with the fresh flowers Callwood believes that facility must always have because it symbolizes caring.

When she first went into the palliative care unit she glimpsed a sign limiting visitors to 10 minutes. According to friend Marg McBurney, Callwood was outraged that the visiting time was so short when people had to pay “so much” for parking.

More than 2,500 men and women from Ontario and across Canada have received palliative and supportive care at the downtown hospice.

After announcing four years ago that she had terminal cancer, Callwood continued to write and lobby and win awards, the most recent earlier in March when she was given the Writer’s Trust award for distinguished contribution. Last summer, a Toronto east end laneway was named after her.

“She’s showing all of us how to die — with caring and humour and unfaltering caring of other people,” McBurney said.

. . . Her own books include The Law is Not for Women (1976), Portrait of Canada (1981), Trial Without End (1995), the story of Charles Ssenyonga, who infected several women with AIDS, and The Man Who Lost Himself (2000).

From 1975 to ’78 Callwood hosted CBC-TV’s In Touch; more recently she interviewed people on VisionTV’s National Treasures.

Over the years, Callwood picked up numerous honours, including more than 15 honorary doctorates, the Order of Canada, Officer (1985), the Order of Ontario (1988), the Canadian News Hall of Fame (1984) and the Toronto Arts Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award (1990).

In what was billed as her last interview, on April 2 with the CBC’s George Stroumboulopoulos, Callwood talked about her life, her accomplishments, her love Trent Frayne, her husband of 63 years, and her illness.

“I’m a mess,” she said during an interview for CBC’s The Hour. “My cancer is all over the place. I’m blowing up like a Goodyear blimp, which I didn’t think was supposed to happen. I thought you were supposed to get lean and beautiful.”