A GATHERING IN MEMORY OF AMY GOT TLIEB Amy Gottlieb Amy Gottlieb was born on May 5, 1953 and died on July 27, 2023, after living with lymphoma for five years. She is survived by her lifelong partner, Maureen and their son Sam; their chosen children, Cindy, Jesse, Anta and Sadie; and their grandchildren, Zoë, Phia, and Zevi. Activist, artist and writer Amy grew up in New York city. She arrived in Canada in 1972 to attend Trent University and became a Canadian citizen, a queer activist, artist and an educator. She was always involved in progressive movements including the Lesbian Organization of Toronto (LOOT), and the Jewish Women’s Committee to End the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Amy was one of the organizers of the first Pride Toronto (then called Lesbian and Gay Pride Day) and the Dykes on the Street March in 1981. She inspired countless young people with her art and her activism in her years of work as a high school teacher. Her art explored the relationship between personal and historical memory. Her videos “In Living Memory” and “Tempest in a Teapot” were widely screened. Amy’s “FBI Family” spoke to state surveillance: layered images combined her mother’s FBI surveillance files with family photographs. Amy’s recent writing, “The year I didn’t die” and “Cancer changed me, but I’m still the same person” talked about her illness with humour and courage. A Gathering in Memory of Amy Gottlieb October 15, 2023 5:15-6:00 Second Line 6:00 - 7:00 Slide show of Amy’s life Jazz cellist Kye Marshall performing and improvising pieces that were meaningful to Amy 7:00 - 9:00 Program Roula Said opening remarks including land acknowledgment Maureen FitzGerald and Sam FitzGerald Gottlieb Debbie Field The Kids: Cindy Robinson, Coura (Anta) Niang, Sadie Epstein‑Fine, Zoe Robinson, Molly Kraft Joy Martyr Coura (Anta) Niang singing Ameena Sultan Angela Robertson A Poem for Amy by Lillian Allen, read by Roula Said Marylin Kanee David Buchbinder and Roula Said music: White Horse 9:00 - 10:00 Time to connect with people The days were snaking themselves In and out of time, earth’s turning sublime I’m trying to remember what is it that I have to remember So I can remember not to forget Or not to forget to remember Death-in-slow-motion in a loved one Is its own geography, its own universe Its own heaping of hope, wish-fulness and sorrow A week before my friend died, I cried Because death was lurking; come to drag, her on angel wings, having taken up residence in her exuberant body My friend wiggled within her skin to escape its grasp And fought the dreaded messenger who had swallowed her plentiful doses of positivity she so generously gave along with the clinical medicines And when death struck, her body was no defence for death’s unquenchable hunger tone deaf to hear the tuning of the human heart and to offering sympathy the searing of pain begs Evolution was stilled, gasping for its own breath Trying to catch-up with the desire to live, for life to bloom endlessly. Across the generations of cherished cherishers Hope is small victories of days with energy barely enough For anything, but energy enough For our Amy’s light to shine through “A Poem for Amy” But one cannot but ponder whose hand tipped the scales Or what all powerful puppeteer Pulled the strings, or bloody fell asleep on the job Or just simply forget to remember that this one, this one beautiful and faithful to goodness loved one , and just this one time should be spared. – Lllian Allen Photo: Maureen Fitzgerald On September 11, 2022 Amy published a piece in the Globe and Mail . In the excerpts here, under her original title “Cancer Changes Everything and Nothing at All”, Amy reflects on the contradictions that dogged her five year treatment of lymphoma. “Cancer Changes Everything and Nothing at All ” “Almost four years and three treatments later, I shout hooray for the medical care I have received along with the tremendous and sustaining support of family and community. I have made a lie of my earlier best-before-date. And yet I do not know if my recent infusion of genetically engineered t-cells will bounce those misbehaving cells out of my body. That has me bound up in uncertainty. A level of uncertainty that I know much of the world deals with daily: “Will I have enough to feed my family?” “Will my children survive and grow?” “Will I escape violence or survive it?” ... Can I have gratitude for Big Pharma, whose drugs have prolonged m y life, while their profits soar? Can I appreciate this when I also rub up against the limitations of this medical system that individualizes and privatizes my illness and my body? When I write about the treatment and care I have received I feel that I must be clear that I am not a propagandist for a cancer industry which has been created to fix the symptoms of a diseased and inflamed society.” Nomi Wall was Kyo Maclear’s mother-in-law and Amy and Maureen’s dear friend. This excerpt about Nomi’s death is from Kyo Maclear’s book Unearthing , published in 2023. Unearthing “[Nomi] left us a beautiful, wide idea of what it means to be descended, beholden, sheltering family. Not family as a fixed or fossilized artifact. Not family as boast-record of achievement....Not family as an act of convenient closure. Hundreds of people will gather for her online memorial; an immense crew of chosen relatives not genetically connected but bound by communal care, willful entanglement and queer improvisational grace. We will reach toward each other, sobbing and laughing and sharing stories, wondering how we are going to make it through our shock and mourning, knowing we are prodigiously blessed; that our dearest Nomi, our Laureate of Love, bequeathed us the how, gave us this outward-looking extralegal, unofficial, kin-making model. This utopian horizon. This wider way to be. For surely in this world there is solace without walls. There is balm beyond the bubble.” A GATHERING IN MEMORY OF AMY GOT TLIEB AMY GOT TLIEB 1953-2023 Front and back cover photos: Steve Horan