WOMAN LED FIGHT TO LEGALIZE MEDICAL MARIJUANA by Karen Kawawada, Record Staff, (Source:Record)
29 Dec 2007
Ontario
KITCHENER - In recent years, when people saw Catherine Devries of Kitchener, they saw a tiny and obviously ill woman who needed to use a wheelchair when she managed to get out of bed at all. But her family and friends don't remember the trail-blazing medical-marijuana activist as frail. Anything but. "Cathy was a very, very strong fighter," said her father Carl Devries. "She would not give up even when her life was extremely difficult for her." Catherine died last Sunday in St. Mary's Hospital, at the age of 49. Most of her life, she had struggled with a host of health problems and pain. Her origins are a bit of a mystery. All Carl and Elly Devries know is that they saw an adoption ad in a Toronto paper in the late 1950s. In those days, it wasn't easy to find families wanting to adopt mixed-race children such as little Cathy, but Carl and Elly were more than willing. As Dutch immigrants, they knew about being outsiders. They had also just lost their second child. They took Cathy in at the age of 17 months. Later, they adopted a second mixed-race child, Tim. Cathy always got along well with both him and her older sister Linda, said her parents. Cathy was a happy, outgoing child. When she moved to Ottawa with her family at the age of nine, she immediately introduced herself to her neighbours. When the family went camping, as soon as the tent was set up, she'd be off making friends, remembered Elly. A five-week trip to Holland in her early teens started lifelong relationships with relatives there. Even in her last days, she treasured pictures of her long-dead grandparents. Young Catherine was athletic and excelled in track and field. But the way her parents remember things, it was an accident in a race that really set off her health problems. Catherine told The Record in 2005 the problems started at age 12, when she bent down and sudden pain shot through her leg. But the episode her parents remember was a few years later, when she crashed into a wall during a relay race, fracturing her spine. After that crash, she was in traction for six weeks, then had surgery, the first of several. But the surgeries may have hurt more than helped -- there were complications, infections and side effects from drugs, Carl said. Later she was diagnosed with inflammation of the arachnoid lining, which protects the brain and spinal cord. Arachnoiditis can be caused by spinal trauma or surgery, and it causes chronic pain and bowel problems. Her health problems didn't permit her to finish high school in the regular way. She got her diploma by correspondence as an adult, accomplishing a goal that was important to her, Elly said. There were better times and worse times, health-wise. During a better period, in her late teens and early 20s, she did some work as a wheelchair model. Her parents like to remember how beautiful she was in those days. Around that time, she moved from Ottawa to Kitchener, where she had friends. She seemed well on the road to being independent, Carl said. But more health problems interfered. Unable to work, she lived on a small disability pension. As far as her parents know, she was never in a serious relationship and her health was too fragile to consider pregnancy. Still, Catherine loved children and was friendly with several in the neighbourhood, Elly said. Catherine wrote several children's stories, which she shared with family and friends. The more public side of her was her activism. She was one of the first Canadians to be legally allowed to use marijuana for medical purposes. "Catherine fought very hard for that licence," said fellow medical-marijuana activist Alison Myrden of Burlington. "She was one of the first people to speak up about it and she should be recognized for that . . . "She knew cannabis worked for her. I watched the difference when I saw her smoke. She'd go from lying in bed and slumping over and falling asleep to sitting up and talking a mile a minute. It was incredible, the transformation." In 2000, police seized 21 grams of marijuana she had ordered from B.C.'s Compassion Club, which provides the drug to sick people. Devries went to court to get it back, and won. In 2002, Devries joined Myrden and seven others in suing the federal government for better access to quality pot. The activists argued it wasn't right for people legally allowed to use marijuana to have to buy from dealers. They also won, although Myrden says the situation now is still far from perfect. In the last few years, Catherine's health took a turn for the worse, but she kept fighting. Twice, doctors told her death was near, but she surprised them, Carl said. "She was such a positive girl, always saying, 'I can handle this; I will get better,' " Elly said. A few months ago, when Catherine was unconscious, Elly sat with her and sang her Dutch songs she had sung to her as a child. A few days later, Catherine called and sung them back to her, Elly said through tears. "It was unbelievable." More recently, doctors told her she might not make it to Christmas. Catherine told them she would, but for the first time, she was wrong. Her family will receive visitors at Kitchener's Ratz-Bechtel Funeral Home at 621 King St. on Saturday, Jan. 5, from 3 to 5 p.m.

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Is it not the most sad state of affairs when even a country which has legalized the possession still has not legalized the distribution except under the most strict and adhering protocol? It prevents people like Cathy from getting the quality of cannbis they need from anything but illegal sources. The United States government purports that crime will be raised from the legalization of marijuana, but I have a question for them. How can the black market and true criminals prosper, profit, and continue to commit crime if you take away the criminals very lifeblood? Policing does not work, cannabis has proven helpful for patients for the last 8,000 years, and you the government insist on letting them do crime. Is it possible the government may be in cahoots with extemely wealthy drug dealers? Let's not assume I'm paranoid, after all Reagan sold weapons to South American terrorists during the Iran-Contra affair, while publicly claiming on national television he was doing nothing of the sorts. George W. Bush has the lowest recorded I.Q. of any president in our history. During a State of the Union address, a stray hanging microhpone caught his attention and for five solid minutes he stared at it swinging while giving his speech! Who's to say a rich drug dealer didn't dangle something shiny in front of him? Corruption has existed on every level of our government since it's beginning, and it gets worse as time goes on. The DEA profits from the War on Drugs, the Pharmaceutical, alcohol, and tobacco industries all profit from pot being illegal, the United States government profits by creating all the branches and departments which are easier and more expensive to maintain than just legalizing. But the United States of America doesn't care about money. Not the way you and I think. If you were given a credit card with $1.3 trillion and told to buy different things, you would only care if that money had a way to get back to you! At least, you'd feel that way if you were a crooked politician, which there seems to be a lot of. So the DEA takes some of the $1.3 trillion, so does every other ant-marijuana group which recieves funds from the government, and the pharmaceutical companies, the alcohol and tobacco companies all see they're profits rise as long as marijuana remains illegal and damn those dying people. Fuck those people who have cancer, AIDS, medula gargantua, glycauma, and psychologically crippling disorders. Fuck all of us, right?