Cheryl Brown
- 1961 CCHS Annual

Cheryl in 1970

Memory Lane

She was a really nice person,
I liked her and I am sorry to hear of her passing.
Classmate - Barbara Green-Flindall

On the night Cheryl was born,
with 2-3 feet of newly fallen snow on the roads,
Cheryl's mother was loaded onto a toboggan
and was pulled 2 miles to the hospital
- an unusual start in life,
perhaps the source of her strength
- Bill Brown

Cheryl Anne Brown

Cheryl was born at the old St. Lambert Hospital on Victoria Avenue, November 28, 1944 and became the only girl in a family of four boys. All five children attended and graduated from St. Lambert/Chambly County High School.

At a relatively early age she showed a desire to have her voice heard and followed her older brothers around reporting and passing judgment on the worthiness of any girl she found talking to them.

Cheryl's high school years were relatively uneventful – she was an above average student who consistently received more Valentines Day cards then all her brothers combined. She spent most of her time with her best friend Jeanne Szabo and where one was found, you would invariably find the other.

In her last year of high school Cheryl learned that her mother had terminal cancer and volunteered to postpone university and assume the role of full time caregiver. She was voted down and enrolled at Sir George Williams. Upon completing her undergraduate degree she took her first year of a postgraduate degree at the University of Toronto; then backpacked across Europe with a friend and upon returning to Canada, moved to Vancouver: completed her Masters of Psychology degree at the University of British Columbia where she was immediately hired as a student councilor.

In her thirties Cheryl was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and, while recovering from one of several operations over a ten-year period, she learned she had advanced ovarian cancer. She had to quit her 'dream job' at UBC and frustrated by the lack of published information about the disease, became an advocate for its early detection and treatment.

Cheryl and the late Debbie Gervin founded Ovarian Cancer Canada in 1998 and, when Debbie died one year later, Cheryl continued as President, spokesperson, recruiter and fund-raiser. She was a regular guest on radio and television talk shows and a frequent speaker at medical conferences and symposiums in Canada, the U.S. and England.

Under Cheryl's stewardship OCC continued to grow and today is recognized across Canada, in the United States and internationally, as an organizational model of advocacy and support for a difficult disease.
For more information go to www.ovariancancercanada.ca

Cheryl's contribution was acknowledged in a variety of ways. When invited to Ottawa, she was given a standing ovation from the floor when introduced in the House of Commons: she was the recipient of several citations including The General Medicine, Courage to Come Back Award in 2002 and, at a bedside ceremony in 2003, the BC Cancer Agency honored her for “her energetic and persistent pursuit for greater awareness, understanding and cure for ovarian cancer” by having The Cheryl Brown Ovarian Cancer Outcomes Unit named in her honor.

Cheryl died on February 23, 2003 and, at a memorial service, I shared the podium with her oncologist. He spoke in awe of how so frail a body could withstand the punishment of years of chemotherapy, radiation and the removal of multiple brain tumours. He marvelled that she had spoken at a conference in Toronto three weeks before she entered the hospital for the last time.

I spoke of a little girl with a big heart who believed life isn't about what happens to you - its what you do about what happens. Someone who believed that the first three letters in the word cancer were put there for a reason and was determined to play apart. Someone, who never married and apart from a cheering section on the sidelines, fought a solitary battle without a word of complaint. Someone who refused to go quietly into the night and through her courage and tenacity made, if not a giant step for mankind, succeeded in making a small step for womankind. All this from a blond haired little girl whom I used to call a sissy, someone who, in the end, left a footprint that eclipsed anything her brothers did in business or in the field of athletics.

Excerpts of the eulogy delivered by Bill Brown, Cheryl’s brother, at a memorial service in Cheryl’s memory, St. Philip’s Anglican Church, Vancouver, 7 March 2003.

The late Cheryl Brown

Cheryl meeting with Federal MP's
in Ottawa - 1998,
received a standing ovation
in the House of Commons.

January 2003

Founding members of Ovarian Cancer Canada,
August 12th 1998.
From left to right:
In front row,
The late Jean Smits, the late Joyce Gill, the late Debbie Gervin, co-founder OCAC.
Top row,
Asa Tromp, the late Cheryl Brown, co-founder OCAC, the late Linda Smythe.

'Disease that whispers' gets $1 million donation
Cheryl Brown, who passed away from ovarian cancer, worked hard to raise awareness
Janet Steffenhagen, Vancouver Sun

Published: Monday, November 27, 2006
VANCOUVER - She was stricken with the disease that whispers, but Cheryl Brown wouldn't be quiet. From the time she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1993 until she died a decade later, Brown worked tirelessly to raise awareness about a disease that creeps up on women -- usually in mid-life -- and masks itself as other common ailments until it is too late to stop its advance. Brown wanted to change that -- first in life, as co-founder of Ovarian Cancer Canada (OCC), and then in death. On Tuesday, Brown's efforts will continue with a $1-million cheque to be presented by her family to Ovarian Cancer Canada and the BC Cancer Agency for the Cheryl Brown Outcome Unit, named in her honour. Her money, supplemented with $250,000 from the cancer agency, is to be used for research. Had she lived, Tuesday would have been her 62nd birthday.

Brown was remembered by family and friends Sunday as a courageous woman who fought for 10 years to raise the profile of ovarian cancer while resisting its onslaught. She and the late Debbe Gervin co-founded the Ovarian Cancer Alliance of Canada, which later became Ovarian Cancer Canada. "She wanted to wake up Canada to the disease that whispers because no one ever talked about ovarian cancer [at the time of her diagnosis]," her brother Bob Brown said in an interview. "She ended up going on speaking engagements across Canada. She got a standing ovation in the House of Commons when she was introduced there.

"She was a real fighter . . . and I loved her dearly."
Mark Leffler, who met Cheryl Brown in the late 1990s after his late wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, said she called herself the "energizer bunny" and it was a fitting description because she refused to give up, even when she suffered recurring bouts of the disease. "Cheryl was obsessive about it," Leffler, an OCC board member, recalled. "She went to conferences, collared politicians, started a newsletter. It was a real grassroots organization."

Cheryl Brown and her three brothers grew up on Montreal's South Shore and lost their mother to breast cancer in 1963. In an interview after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer, Brown, a post-secondary counsellor, said she had worried about a genetic disposition to breast cancer but hadn't thought much about ovarian cancer.

She had also been battling rheumatoid arthritis since the 1970s.
"The cancer caught all of us off-guard," Bob Brown said, recalling how he stopped at a library to research the disease and the survival rates before visiting his sister in hospital. He said Cheryl had to do similar research and became adamant that women needed to know much more about the quiet killer. Through chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, she refused to give up. In 2002, her indomitable spirit was recognized by a Courage to Come Back award. Bob Brown said his sister, who never married and died at age 59, lived frugally with the plan of giving her money to research. "She wants her legacy to be that she contributed to the eradication of this disease," he added.

Dr. Ken Swenerton, her physician and her friend, said Brown had amazing energy and a "gentle doggedness."
"She was absolutely convinced from early on that Canadian women didn't know nearly enough about this disease and she was bound to change that," he said. The Cheryl Brown Outcome Unit, named in her honour before her death, is a centre for ovarian cancer research. Asked why the unit was named after Brown, Swenerton replied with a chuckle: "You had to know her, I think. She established this organization and through her advocacy, made it clear that there was work that had to be done."


We have heard from brother Bill who wanted to clarify any possible misconception with regards to the source of the $1 million.

"The article seems to imply that the money was donated by the Brown family and it wasn't. It was the sum total of Cheryl's estate, and something that we find remarkable considering that; she never inherited, never married, never held a particularly high paying job and had to opt out of the workforce, due to sickness at a early age. However she did, make modest, tax effective investments in real estate over the years, which now enables others to continue to fight the disease that ultimately took her life."

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