ARTS SCENE IN SHOCK
Smedick dies from virus
The local arts and culture scene is in shock and mourning the loss of one of its biggest champions after news that Lois Smedick was the latest victim of West Nile virus.
“She was a stellar leader — she changed so many lives because of her involvement in the arts community,” said Carolyne Rourke, president of the Windsor Endowment for the Arts, on which Smedick was still a board member.
The local health unit reported Friday that the three lives lost in Ontario this year to the mosquitoborne virus were all Windsor area residents. Until just a few weeks ago, Smedick, 84, was described as mentally sharp and “vibrant” and still deeply involved in a number of community causes.
“Lois was an amazing woman, absolutely amazing — she was a part of so many aspects of our arts community,” said Rourke, who knew Smedick since she arrived here in the 1960s to teach English at the University of Windsor.
“Without Lois, there’d be no art gallery,” said longtime friend and former student Lenore Langs, president of Literary Arts Windsor and founder of BookFest Windsor, two of countless local organizations and events that Smedick helped foster.
The mayor and council of the day fought the plan for an iconic, standalone art gallery, but then board chair and president Smedick stood firm, later being praised for her vision, courage and “spine of iron.”
While most in the local arts, cultural and academic communities knew Smedick, art gallery director Catharine Mastin said she was not one to broadcast her accomplishments across many fields. “She was a kind and generous person who understood supporting many things and how they were connected — arts, music, literature, facilities.”
While strong-willed and determined, Smedick was praised for what Assumption University president Richard Corneil called her “incredible gift” of getting people to rally around the causes to which she attached herself.
“If you knew she was involved in something, it gave it street cred — people would line up behind her,” said Corneil. A longtime member of the U of W board of governors, Smedick also once chaired the Assumption University board.
“She was a huge champion of equity,” said University of Windsor president Alan Wildeman. The winner of the Clark Award and numerous other university and community honours, Smedick was U of W’s first female dean, heading the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research.
A founding member of the Friends of Women’s Studies, her volunteer activities ranged from the Capitol Theatre and Artcite to Erie Wildlife Rescue and the Jazzpurr Society. She worked to protect Windsor’s heritage structures and was part of a group of women who successfully pushed for changes to Ontario’s workplace protection laws following the inquest into nurse Lori Dupont’s murder at Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital.
An avid gardener, Smedick was bitten “a few weeks ago” by a mosquito. An intensely private person, few knew that she had been hospitalized, and many were shocked by the news of her death.
“This is terrible news. Lois was a lovely person, one of the finest people of my acquaintance,” acclaimed American writer Joyce Carol Oates said in an email to the Star on learning of the sudden death of her longtime friend.
“She gave so much,” said Mastin. “She was a model of community service and of community building.”
Funeral arrangements are still being finalized by the Walter D. Kelly Life Celebration Centre, while the university is organizing an event to honour what Wildeman describes as “an incredible member of our community.”