The Quiet Warrior

A good life and a tale for sharing . . .

In life, Roberta Langtry was a school teacher in the city of Toronto, Ontario. She became a teacher at the age of sixteen and remained a teacher with the Toronto School Board for more than fifty years teaching many generations of children and devoting much time and energy to working with autistic children and their speaking difficulties.

She was quietly passionate about nature, conservation and the environment and an ardent defender of biodiversity, believing that we must preserve the wild places for our children and their children - during her lifetime, she contributed generously to the Green Party, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, The Campaign for Conservation, the Council of Canadians and a multitude of other charitable organizations dedicated to environmental causes.

She lived simply, frugally and without ostentation, and those who were fortunate in knowing her had no idea how affluent she was, but when this charming thoughtful woman died late last year at almost ninety years of age, she willed over four million dollars to the Nature Conservancy of Canada for the purchase and guardianship of fragile wild places and the preservation of natural wonders such as the Great Bear Rainforest and the vast Canadian boreal forest which I love so much.

Roberta Langtry was ahead of her time, and we are poorer for her journey beyond the fields we know. She walked lightly on this earth, and she departed it quietly with no fuss and fanfare, just as she had lived - within this gentle woman lived a fierce and indomitable heart, boundless generosity, radical acceptance and the spirit of a Shambhala warrior. You may read more about her here.