Remembering Velma Demerson: Grand soul, feminist, human rights advocate and writer

[Velma Demerson was jailed in 1939 and by the Ontario government for the "crime" of having a Chinese boyfriend; sixty years later, she began an ultimately successful legal challenge seeking reparations; I'm pleased to present this remembrance for Demerson by Harry Kopyto, the campaigning human rights lawyer, who served as one of her advisors -Cory]

On Monday May 13, 2019, Athena Mary Lakes, better known as Velma Demerson, died from old age in a Vancouver hospital at the age of 98. She is best known for her successful legal battle culminating in 2002 against the Ontario Government for incarcerating her in Toronto in 1939 for almost a year. The reason for her incarceration? She was found morally incorrigible under the Female Refuges Act for living with a Chinese man, Harry Yip, whom she married after her release. Their son, who was born while she was in jail, was taken away from her until after her release.

Velma returned to Toronto in the late 1990s after living half a century on the west coast. While there, she married and raised two children. Her implacable sense of injustice led an unstoppable Velma Demerson to storm back to Toronto to quench her thirst for justice. After being rejected by a slew of Toronto lawyers, eventually she found Harry Kopyto who initiated a legal claim arising out of her imprisonment and turned a room in his office into a defence committee centre. Gradually, her case drew widespread public attention and support including from the leaders of all Ontarios political parties at that time, the womens movement, academics, the organized labour movement, the Chinese community and many individual human rights activists such as David Suzuki. Read the rest