27 February 2017

I can’t remember how I met Sally Jurica. It was at the University of Waterloo, in 2005, and she was everywhere at once. She was a member of the Economics Society, the Debating Society, the Arts Student Union, probably dozens of others, including the infamous Cheese Club; she had a wide range of interests, coupled with the ambition to know everyone around her. These are a politician’s instincts, but she did not seek attention. She simply wanted to make things better. She was fascinated by ideas, and by people with big ideas. She surrounded herself with such people.

I knew Sally was sick, but I never pressed her for details of what she had, and she never told me. In her way, she didn’t want to burden others. I respect and admire the resolve it must have taken to stick to this choice. But it makes me doubly sad to think of the comfort her friends might have been able to give her in near the end.

Sally came into my life at two points: in my final year of university, and eight years later. I think we both found each other, twice, at just the right time. It gives me a strange sense of responsibility to know that of the memories we made together, they live only with me now, and nowhere else.

I will remember Sally as a quirky, cheerful, radiant, diminutive, political, redhead who staked out a place in my heart; that place will be hers for the rest of my days.