Christine Edwards

Christine grew up in King City, Ontario where she was a student leader at King City Secondary School. Also, prom queen – she would absolutely hate me mentioning that! Christine and I met in school, and I vividly remember seeing her for the first time across the classroom, love at first sight. Our first date was a Sadie Hawkins dance in Grade 12, and she never let me forget that she asked me out first. We married after university and were together for over 50 years. She never lost that dazzling smile that melted my heart so many years ago.

She graduated from University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Science in Physical Therapy in 1978. She was the first person in her family to attend university, and she chose a career for which she was ideally suited. If you were a patient with a stroke or needed long-term rehabilitation from an injury of some kind, you would have been incredibly lucky to have Christine as your therapist. She had the knowledge, patience, and compassion to inspire patients to work towards recovery. She eventually moved into hospital administration at Windsor Regional Hospital where she mentored young health care professionals and took on leadership roles in the physiotherapy community in Windsor and across the province through her work with the Ontario Physiotherapy Association. Her kindness and caring were much appreciated by patients, and all who had the chance to work with her.

Despite her professional success, Christine would be the first to say that family always came first. She was an awesome mother to three boys – Jeff, Mike, and Tim; doting Oma for Alex, Stella, Logan, and Jackson; supportive daughter to Hans and Ursula; and nurturing big sister to Pat and Debby. She was great in all these roles because she cared, because she was naturally kind, and because she saw the best in every person and every situation. Some people see the glass as half-full; not Christine, she saw it as 98% full most of the time.

She loved to laugh, often at me, and her favorite movies were romantic comedies. We watched Mama Mia at least twenty times and at Christmas, “Love Actually” was an annual tradition. Christine was passionate about gardening, the outdoors, and the environment. She was a recycling maniac – if you threw anything in the garbage that should go in recycling, you would feel the wrath of Christine – and she composted everything that could be composted – and some things that could not. She loved walking on the Lake Erie beach at Rondeau where we lived with her dogs Foster and Yuko happily trotting along with her. And she loved traveling. She was proud of her German heritage and enjoyed many trips to Germany to visit family as well as travels throughout Europe, the UK, and the southwestern United States. Although she traveled extensively outside Canada, she also enjoyed the beauty of our great country from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Tofino, British Columbia. In April 2023, Christine wrote out a list of places that she was excited to visit over the coming years. Sadly, about 4 weeks later, she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, the disease that would take her life just two short months later in July.

I miss Christine terribly as does everyone who knew her. Christine was 68 years old when she left us – around the average age for diagnosis of adult AML. This may seem old to a young person but those of us who are a bit more senior know that Christine and other older adults still have much more to give. Despite our progress in treating many forms of blood cancer in children and young adults, we have made few advances in treating adult AML. Please join us in making a difference in the lives of patients diagnosed with a blood cancer by supporting the work of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada.

David Edwards