Changemaker Mary Valentich: Still fighting for change at 84

From as early as she can remember, Mary Valentich was surrounded by an abundance of adoring adults.

Her mother ran a boarding house, so as the only little girl in the house “I got a lot of attention,” she says. Her father toted her along to meetings of the local Croatian community, animated gatherings where politics was often discussed. In this rare environment, a preschooler was not only tolerated, but allowed to be heard. “I found it all so fascinating, and I suffered no penalty,” she adds with a laugh, “no matter how outrageous my comments.”

It was an idyllic childhood and teen years that combined summers spent outdoors swimming in Lake Ontario and playing tennis, with school study and being encouraged to be inquisitive about the world around her. “We were working poor,” says Valentich, but her immigrant parents “never stopped aiming for a better life, and they instilled that in me as well.

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Nearly eighty years later, the native of the once small village of Cooksville, Ontario exhibits the same childlike curiosity and openness that was cultivated under the loving watch of all those adults. So it’s not at all surprising that today, nearly three decades after teaching her last class as a professor, Valentich continues to have a hand in her lifetime profession, along with a plethora of community projects and social justice issues.

“I feel so fortunate to have had a productive career and to have worked with so many dedicated folks on issues of importance to our individual and societal well-being,” says Valentich, who served as a professor at the University of Calgary’s faculty of social work for more than two decades. “I’m very pleased to be doing this at 84 and why not? If you have the good fortune to discover something that you really care about, go for it.”

In a busy six-decade career, Valenitch made an indelible mark as an academic, social worker, feminist, author, human rights activist and pioneering sex educator. In more recent times, she has also become a leading voice and advocate for such issues as climate change, assisted dying and a host of civic causes.

She’s been fearless in standing up for those issues – unafraid of voicing what others may have viewed as unpopular opinions – by writing more than 250 letters to the editor sent to newspapers over the decades.