Toronto Pro-life activist Stella Corbett passed away at the age of 95.
On Dec. 1, long-time pro-life activist Stella Corbett passed away peacefully at the Amica Retirement Residence in Thornhill, at the age of 95.
The Interim wrote about Corbett in 1991, reporting that she picketed at several downtown Toronto abortuaries as one of the “shepherds of The Way Inn.” The paper reported “Corbett is a 73 year-old grandmother and retired lab technician” who “returned to the picket line two weeks after her husband died.” On her return she and Bill Mullins persuaded the sister of a woman in Buriana’s abortuary to go inside and bring the pregnant woman out. The woman was brought by Corbett and Mullins to The Way Inn and decided against having an abortion. Corbett told The Interim “that was a good day.”
Interim columnist Frank Kennedy recalled a “fine woman” who was a “genuine activist and loyal pro-lifer.”
“When most people are making plans on how to get to Florida,” Kennedy said of Corbett’s coming to activism in her 70s, “she was becoming very active in pro-life.”
She picketed regularly with the likes of the Burnie Sisters, Barbara and Tom Brown, Joanne Deileman, Anne Dobson, George Eygenraam, and Mullins. She also went to pro-life dinners and Campaign Life Coalition activist meetings, with Frank Kennedy and his wife Ileen often driving her to local pro-life events.
Corbett was active at St. Paschal Baylon parish in Thornhill, where she sold Christmas cakes for Campaign Life Coalition and was the LifeChain zone captain until 2012; at the age of 94, she passed the reins to a fellow parishioner.
Kennedy called Corbett a “live wire” and said she had the energy of someone half her age. She was an “edifying example for pro-lifers,” said Kennedy.
Corbett was predeceased by her husband Albert Corbett, with whom she had two children, Helen and Walter. She was survived by her sister Nora Noseworthy.
