VAN ATTACK VICTIM’S FAMILY HOSTS FUNDRAISER
ANNE MARIE D’AMICO FOUNDATION AIMS TO RAISE $1M FOR WOMEN’S SHELTER
When Anne Marie D’amico was a little girl — six, maybe seven years old — her grandfather dubbed her, over dinner one night, “la tartaruga.”
It means “the turtle” in Italian.
Anne Marie was a slow eater, even then. She savoured her food. She took her time. “It’s not that she did it on purpose,” her big sister Frances said Monday. “It was just her nature to do it at her pace.”
So “la tartaruga” stuck. “She embraced it,” her brother Nick said.
Over the years, the nickname evolved. “Tartaruga” became “Tart” and then “Ruug.”
“And then one day I just called her Schmoog,” Nick D’amico said. “It became Schmoog forever.”
At that point in the interview Monday, Frances turned to her older brother. “I think you and I,” she said, “were the only ones that really called her that.”
On April 23, 2018, a van driving down Toronto’s Yonge Street struck and killed Anne Marie D’amico. She was one of 26 people hit that day and one of 10 killed.
Alek Minassian was arrested after the attack and charged with 10 counts of murder. He told police in interviews after his arrest that he was inspired by a violent online ideology that has, at its root, a virulent hatred of women. He is scheduled to go on trial early next year.
Anne Marie was 30 years old when she died. She was, her siblings said “the quintessential people person.”
She loved to bake, especially macaroons. She loved to build elaborate food “creations” like bocconcini penguins with olive arms and carrot noses. “She wouldn’t stop until it was perfect,” Nick said.
She gave away her time, with joy. She was the volunteer of the year at the 2016 Rogers Cup.
“She loved to do things for people, make people laugh, make people smile,” Frances said. “If someone was having a baby in her office she would go that extra mile to find the finishing touches for the shower.”
She loved her family — her brother and her sister and the parents she lived with until she died. On family birthdays, she was always the one with the perfect gift, “the one thing that they spoke about years ago and she somehow remembered,” Frances said.
Tuesday would have been Anne Marie D’amico’s 32nd birthday. In her honour, to keep her memory alive, her family is throwing a massive fundraiser in Toronto. The evening, which will feature a live band, comedy and a magician, will benefit the Anne Marie D’amico Foundation. The family’s goal this year: to raise $1 million for the North York Women’s Shelter.
The choice of cause, for Anne Marie’s family, was deliberate. Their sister and daughter was killed in North York. The man accused of her murder allegedly targeted women specifically. Her aunt also worked at the shelter. She saw first-hand the good it does and the need it fills.
Speaking Tuesday in the boardroom at his condo building, Nick D’amico lit up when he described what the shelter, which is undergoing a complete rebuild, can offer to women in need. He raved about the soft lighting and the on-site kennel and the “trauma-informed approach” to care. “The subtleties that have gone into the shelter are just incredible,” he said.
Like Anne Marie herself, the shelter staff know that little things are never little, that small gifts of attention and kindness and care add up, that stacked together they are everything; they are how we show others in need that they are seen.
The Anne Marie D’amico Foundation was launched on Dec. 3, 2018. The plan is to have a marquee event on that date every year, to keep Anne Marie’s spirit alive in the world and to raise money for worthy causes. The party even has a name, The Turtle Project, picked for Anne Marie’s childhood nickname.
“We didn’t have to speak about it out loud, but we all knew we wanted her name to continue,” Frances D’amico added. “I think this has brought our family even closer in a weird way, but in a great way, because we all have the same goal, in Anne Marie’s legacy and her name being out there, and the goodness she brought the world.”