Mairuth sarsfield biography

Mairuth Hodge Sarsfield, CQ ( – May 7, ) was a Canadian activist, diplomat, journalist, researcher and television personality, as well as an accomplished broadcaster, civil servant, .

This article was published more than 11 years ago. Some information may no longer be current. A black Canadian born in Montreal in , 10 years before women in Quebec could even vote, she travelled the world as a diplomat and storyteller, breaking new ground along the way. Sarsfield's friend, broadcaster Rita Deverell. Mairuth Sarsfield died May 7 in Toronto, following complications from stroke.

She was Best known for her autobiographical novel No Crystal Stair , which was featured on the Canada Reads contest, Ms. Sarsfield was also a diplomat posted abroad for the Department of External Affairs, and a key figure at both Expo 67 in Montreal and Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan.

Sarsfield was born in the Little Burgundy neighbourhood of Montreal to parents Anne Packwood and Dan Vaughan and raised by her mother.

She was one of the co-ordinators of the Canadian pavilion in , which led to some confusion among the Japanese hosts. At a ribbon-cutting ceremony, a Japanese official called for the Canadian delegate to step forward. The Japanese official looked past the elegantly dressed year-old black woman in front of him, and continued searching for the Canadian representative.

Sarsfield, not entirely unfamiliar with this kind of behaviour, stepped forward to take the scissors. Discrimination, which she overcame with quiet charm, was the background noise rather than the central furor of her life. When she published her first and only novel at the age of 66, some critics wondered why she hadn't painted a bleaker picture of life in Little Burgundy, the black neighbourhood in Montreal that also produced Oscar Peterson whose sister was Ms.

Sarsfield's piano teacher. As she told one interviewer, "Being black is a lot of fun — or can be.