Fiona eberts biography

She was married for 44 years to the late Jake Eberts, the Canadian film producer, and the couple used their international resources and influence for a number of causes. In , Ms. Its goal is to educate young women in rural Africa, because few of them have the opportunity to go to school, a privilege often reserved for their brothers.

Eberts was living in Paris at the time and took a train to London, then to Cambridge, to meet Ann Cotton, who founded Camfed in Cotton from her home in Cambridge, England. I remember travelling in southern Africa and our plane made an emergency landing. We didn't know what country we were in. Fiona walked into a nearby building and was soon chatting with some local women and turned up with toasties for us to eat.

Fiona eberts biography

Camfed does not expect to find instant solutions to rural poverty in Africa. Its objective is to find long-term solutions and it sponsors mostly girls — and some boys — through primary and secondary school and, in some cases, on to university. The organization also teaches women how to start and run their own small businesses and arrange grants and loans.

Cotton, who uses interesting stories about the work Camfed is doing to raise money in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. Eberts, who died in Albany, N. Her husband had been an early backer of Jeffrey Skoll, the founder of eBay, who soon became a major donor to Camfed through his own foundation. Cotton said. She indicated she admired the colourful scarf Fiona was wearing, and Fiona took it off straight away and gave it to her.

Eberts also became involved in other projects in Africa, including helping to start a plantation in northeastern Ghana to grow moringa trees, whose leaves are rich in protein, vitamins and minerals. That project combined two of her interests: alleviating poverty in rural Africa and alternative medicine. Fiona Louise Leckie was born on Oct.

Her father, John Leckie, worked for a British insurance company in Singapore; when the war began, he enlisted in the British army. After the war, John wrote a letter to Mary-Lou, whom he had met in Singapore, proposing marriage and asking her to meet him in Sydney, Australia. She managed to get there via tramp steamers and they were married in late They returned to England, where Fiona was born, but were soon back in Asia.

Alexander Eberts recalls that his grandparents were never bitter about their time in the Japanese camps. And then Eberts, a man who was athletic, abstemious and in touch with his own spirituality, fell ill. What appeared to be a detached retina in November, , turned out to be a very rare melanoma of the eye. Despite aggressive treatment, the cancer metastasized to his liver.

His wife cared for him at home until his failing systems precipitated his transfer to palliative care at the Jewish General Hospital four days before he died on Sept. He was Or as his friend Paul Desmarais Jr. Jake Eberts leaves his wife, Fiona, his two sons, Alexander and David, daughter Lyndsay, five siblings and his extended family.

Report an editorial error. Report a technical issue. Editorial code of conduct. Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following. This is a space where subscribers can engage with each other and Globe staff. Non-subscribers can read and sort comments but will not be able to engage with them in any way.

Click here to subscribe. If you would like to write a letter to the editor, please forward it to letters globeandmail. Readers can also interact with The Globe on Facebook and Twitter. If you do not see your comment posted immediately, it is being reviewed by the moderation team and may appear shortly, generally within an hour. We have closed comments on this story for legal reasons or for abuse.

For more information on our commenting policies and how our community-based moderation works, please read our Community Guidelines and our Terms and Conditions. Subscribers who are logged in to their Globe account can post comments on most articles for up to hours following the publication of an article on globeandmail. Closing comments after a short window of time helps to ensure effective moderation so that conversations remain civil and on topic.

Comments may also be closed at any time for legal reasons or abuse. Skip to main content. Jake Eberts, co-founder of Goldcrest Films, brought out the best in people. Renaissance 6. Doogal 2. See all. Previous 1. Personal details Edit. Born July 10 , Montreal, Quebec, Canada. September 6 , Montreal, Quebec, Canada uveal melanoma.

Did you know Edit. Trivia He moved to Paris in Quotes People wouldn't think of someone with a chemical engineering background to end up in the movie world, but life can take you down these wonderful paths. Related news. Contribute to this page Suggest an edit or add missing content. Learn more about contributing. Edit page. More to explore.