Patricia Perez passed away at 52 in her adopted home of Montréal a week before Thanksgiving: an annual holiday when Canadians celebrate the harvest while mostly oblivious to the hardships faced by those toiling in the fields.

Patricia set out to change that as a social justice activist, and as a union organizer with UFCW Canada. She was a participant rather than an onlooker, and her insistence on a more just Canada made a tremendous difference to the lives and hopes of thousands of migrant agricultural workers brought here each season. Many of those migrant workers come from Mexico: a land Patricia was forced to flee in 1996 after her social justice activities there met with a masked gunpoint ultimatum to leave the country or else.

      Patricia Perez, 1955 - 2007

So Patricia had a very good idea of what oppression was all about, as well as the heartbreak of temporary exile to a foreign land thousands of miles from home.

Soon after arriving in Montréal she was called by an acquaintance to help translate for some injured Mexican migrant workers being treated at a Montréal hospital. From that day on she dedicated herself to helping other migrant workers with their cultural, legal, medical and especially their workplace problems; first as a volunteer and then commencing in 2004 as the co-ordinator of the UFCW Canada Migrant Agricultural Workers Support Centre in St-Rémi.

She campaigned tirelessly against the discrimination faced by migrant farm workers under the federal program that brings migrant workers here; particularly their exclusion from having any say about their housing, working conditions or compensation.

She also succeeded in doing what no one else had ever done in Québec before: she organized the first-ever union local comprised of migrant workers. The announcement of that news came just a week before her death, as did the news that for now applications for two other Québec farms had been set aside.

So the struggle continues but Patricia would not have been deterred. At a memorial service a few days after her death, busloads of migrant workers were among the 500 mourners. They spoke of her as a friend, a surrogate mother and an inspiration.

“We can do it," she used to say to the workers and together they did.

She had planted courage and the campaign she nurtured continues to grow.