DAYA VARMA’S MEMORIAL
Editors
On May 2, 2015, over 100 people gathered at the Centre Funéraire Côte-Des-Neiges Inc. in Montreal to celebrate the life of Daya Varma. Stephen Orlov chaired the meeting, with speeches from around 20 of Daya’s family members, colleagues and comrades. Through the two-hour program and the various speeches therein, a composite portrait of Daya re-emerged, as a scientist, an activist, a humanist and a human being.
We look forward to putting some of the speeches up for public access in the future; for the moment, we leave you with a quote from a draft of Daya’s book that was printed in the invitation to the May 2 event:
“The struggle to eradicate poverty is as old as civilization itself. This struggle has taken various forms such as slave revolts, fight for 8-hour working day, minimum wages, holidays, old age pension, the right to unionize, universal franchise and so. Almost all these struggles drew some support from or were initiated by the non-poor and others. Despite all these struggles, poverty continues to prevail. It would thus seem that the system of governance rather than piecemeal efforts need to be changed to eradicate poverty; it is not within the domain of healthcare.”
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