In memoriam

Anita Murray (Sysavane), GrCert 82, BA 84, a beloved social worker whose career spanned more than three decades, passed away on February 5, 2021. She was 80.

Murray was a member of the Windrush generation — Caribbean emigrants who settled in the United Kingdom after the Second World War. Her family left Jamaica for London when she was a teen and later moved to Montreal. Murray’s career at Batshaw Youth and Family Centres — the agency that serves Montreal’s anglophone community — began at the reception desk.

By the mid-1970s, however, Murray decided that she wanted to play a more active role in the lives of disadvantaged children. She went back to school to become a social worker herself. Murray did so as a single mother who also had to balance her job at Batshaw with a part-time job at a YWCA.

She enrolled in night classes to not only earn her secondary-school diploma, but a Graduate Certificate and Bachelor of Arts from Concordia in 1982 and 1984, respectively. After she completed a Master of Social Work at McGill University, Murray assumed her place at Batshaw as a social worker with a caseload of her own.

While the job had a number of challenges — Black social workers were frequently overworked, under-resourced and undercompensated — it had significant rewards.

“My mom always had people approaching her and thanking her for helping them and their families, perhaps even more so after she retired in 2007,” said daughter Khoba Sysavane, BFA 00, a staff member at Concordia’s Office of Facilities Management.

A throughline of Murray’s life was her commitment to self-discovery, noted Sysavane. An avid reader, Murray closely followed politics, attended lectures at Concordia, kept physically active and nurtured her spiritual side with yoga, qigong and meditation.

“She took tai chi with Roger Ashton [BA 82, Cert 86] at Concordia for years,” said Sysavane. “She even encouraged Batshaw to hire him to offer classes to the staff. “She was on a constant path of self-enrichment. I honestly don’t know where she got her energy from.”

Murray is survived by her daughter, a brother and three sisters.