Judith
Dedicated to the Memory of,
Judith Hamel
24 January 1964 … 21 August 2005
Judith Hamel, a resident of Riverside-Albert, passed away at The Moncton City Hospital, on Sunday 21 August, 2005.
She was married to Randy Gregory and mother of two daughters, Améthyste, 11 years old and Emily Opal, 3 and a half years old. She is also survived by her father, Grégoire Hamel and her mother, Allixe Frappier of Granby, Québec; her brothers, Rémi Hamel of Montréal, Simon Hamel and his wife Sylvie Malo of Coburg, Ontario, Sylvain Hamel and his wife Joanne Levésque of Granby, Québec and Bruno Hamel of Ottawa; as well as several nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles and cousins. She leaves behind a large number of friends and great memories.
Judith Hamel pursued her graduate studies in French literature at L’Université de Moncton. She was widely known and much appreciated by the Acadian artistic and cultural community, where she was very actively involved. The Executive Director of Film Zone from 1991, she organized the International Festival of Francophone Cinema in Acadie for nearly ten years. In 1996 she was a co-founder of the publishing firm Bouton d’or Acadie, and last March, she became the Executive Director of the Aberdeen Cultural Centre, in Moncton. A nature lover and concerned with the preservation of its gifts, she was a candidate for the Green Party in the Moncton-Dieppe-Riverview riding in the June 2004 federal election.
Over the past decades, Judith Hamel pursued a double career as a writer and as a cultural worker. In addition to several publications in the field of literary criticism, she wrote and published two collections of poetry and ten works of children’s literature. She was the organizer and / or co-ordinator of several major artistic and literary events, gave public readings of her work, was a public speaker and presented many workshops in schools. In 2003 she received the Lieutenant-Governor’s Prize for early childhood literacy and in 2004, she was short-listed for the literary award Prix littéraire Antonine-Maillet-Acadie-Vie.