This is really down to Maudlin, who shared the following information. With her kind permission, I am sharing it here and hoping that all of us who knew and loved Observerinvancouver will do a bit in her honour.
Good morning! I received the following announcement from Observerinvancouver’s (Oiv’s) husband, Rick. If you’d like to honor her with a donation, he and young readers would be thrilled. I’ve been thinking of her a lot lately. She was a special person.
For Immediate Release:
Sunshine Coast festival welcomes new endowment
Sechelt, BC – The Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts is pleased to announce a new endowment fund that will help the organization’s literacy outreach in schools and in the greater Sunshine Coast community.
The memory of Moyna Krusell (1944-2023), who was a resident of Vancouver and a devoted supporter of the Festival of the Written Arts, will live on through the creation of the Moyna Krusell Memorial Endowment, which will be held and managed by the Sunshine Coast Foundation.
Krusell was well known for her generosity, and although she was unable to attend university due to financial constraints in her early life, she was an avid reader and lifelong learner with a boundless curiosity about the world. She was also an inspiration to the young people in her life, encouraging them to read and love literature and stories.
To honour her passion and spirit, Moyna’s husband Rick Bennett is donating $100,000 to create the fund, which has already started to grow as word of the endowment has spread and friends and family members have begun to contribute in Moyna’s memory.
Proceeds from the endowment will support the work of Celebration of Authors, Books and Community (CABC), a joint initiative of School District 46 – Sunshine Coast and the Festival of the Written Arts that brings writers into Sunshine Coast classrooms to talk about books and writing and encourages students to express themselves through the written and spoken word. CABC also publishes Coastal Voices, an annual anthology of Sunshine Coast student writing.
“The Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts is honoured to receive this generous gift of the Moyna Krusell Endowment which will greatly extend our literacy outreach to children and youth on the Sunshine Coast,” says Board President Maggie Schell. “To quote Dr. Seuss: ‘the more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.’ The Festival of the Written Arts is committed to creating spaces for readers and writers to come together. Our heartfelt gratitude to Rick Bennett for creating this legacy in honour of Moyna Krusell.”
For more information about contributing to the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts through the Moyna Krusell Memorial Endowment or its other endowments, please visit www.writersfestival.ca or phone the festival office at 604-885-9631.
Every little bit helps. Every little bit keeps her memory alive and encourages reading and writing in the young...the readers and writers of the future.
