I sat beside Lorrie Williams in the Council Chambers for 4 years, me the fresh-faced and keen new Councillor, she as a fresh-faced and still-keen City Councillor who had already seen it all! We joked and ribbed each other, sometimes we disagreed, sometimes we changed each others minds, but through it all she taught me a lot about public service and about listening to the community we served – not just the loud voices, but those whose voices were often ignored. She was always kind, always thoughtful, and full of love for her community.
Lorrie dedicated her life to selfless public service and volunteerism. She broke glass ceilings, empowered women in this community and around the world, and in always speaking for the voiceless, she changed lives.
New Westminster knows her for her 16 years as a City Councillor, and for her decades as a marriage officiant. The joke was she didn’t just know everyone in town, she married half of them! But in her heart she was always and educator – and in being a teacher and mentor to young women is where she had global impact. Teaching in Canada, in Thailand and in Kenya. When she took her experience to Kenya, she saw inequity in how impoverished young women were provided access to education, and took action to give them the hope and dreams that education provided. She founded a school and a charity to support it. As a result of her exemplary leadership and tireless fundraising efforts, a generation of women in east Africa are new leaders in their communities, carrying on public service as teachers, as doctors, as leaders. Lorrie served on the board of the charity she founded 40 years ago, and her legacy is carried on in the thousands of young women whose lives she changed.
Lorrie was also passionate about protecting animals. In her leadership with the Royal City Humane Society, she oversaw development and expansion of the new shelter space and maintenance of the society’s no-kill policy. Travelling to Central America several years ago, she saw a need to support humane animal protection in Guatemala, and returned regularly to help the shelter and animal clinic in any way she could.
From spearheading the memorialization of Wait for Me Daddy at the 75th year of the world-famous photograph, to serving the New Westminster Symphony Orchestra, Lorrie always sought to bring recognition to others in her community, never drawing the attention to herself. Indeed, Lorrie demonstrated this in her decades of selfless and invisible work in the community: washing dishes at Aunt Leah’s Place to be a mentor and support to young adults aging out of care, organizing the storefront at the local Thrift Store to raise money for the Royal Columbian Hospital Auxiliary, or opening her home and her heart to a resident who needed help. Always going above, always generous with her time and her ideas, always driven to make her community a more just, and more caring place.
Citizenship is about service to others, and Lorrie embodied this. A life of selfless contribution has been recognized by a Governor General Meritorious Service Medal, a YWCA Women of Distinction Award, being once named as Canada’s Humanist of the Year, and as New Westminster’s Citizen of the Year. No one embodied the spirit of citizenship better than Lorrie. Our community is stronger because of her, may she rest in that incredible power.
