Noreen, PhD, MSN, MSW, is a retired nursing faculty member with extensive practice experience in community-based programs. She has served as director of two schools of nursing and moved to Victoria to serve as UVic’s School of Nursing Director in 2007.

Noreen brings knowledge of healthcare systems, administration, evaluation research and grant writing. She has a strong commitment to collaborative work. Having worked with the initial patient-oriented research activities in BC, she understands that health services need to be provided so that those being served are the decision makers in all processes. When she was first introduced to VSRA, Noreen saw the organization as one that is deeply committed to those collaborative values.  

She has two family members who have had strokes and learned years ago that stroke recovery can be a long-term process requiring supports that augment what our healthcare system offers. In her spare time, Noreen enjoys being in two book clubs, playing Irish folk music, sewing, baking bread and participating in various fitness activities. She and her husband have found that Victoria is the best place they have ever lived!    

Lynne is a retired nurse who was educated to the PhD level in nursing at UBC. She has served in a variety of roles in nursing: bedside nurse, clinical specialist, educator and researcher.

Health promotion, cardiovascular care, pain care, aging and nursing education have been specific topics of attention in her clinical and academic work.

Lynne’s father had a stroke at age 60 and lived for another 10 years, the first five of which he was at home cared for by his wife, thus Lynne had personal experience with the challenges of stroke survivors and their caregivers.

Lynne has two adult children and four grandchildren, and she leads an active life paddling outrigger canoes, cycling, book clubs, and choir. You might even find her strumming a ukelele!  View UViC Profile >

 Alvin, PhD, Registered Professional Forester, is a stroke survivor. He has been a member of the VSRA for eight years and recently assumed the role of Treasurer for VSRA.

Alvin has worked for the BC government for over 35 years. He is the Team Lead in Forest Genetics Research and Adjunct Professor in Forest Biology at UVic. He has worked in New Zealand and Rome (with the UN) and travelled to many places where forestry is important. He is a recipient of the Canadian Institute of Forestry Scientific Achievement Award.

Eight years ago Alvin suffered a stroke, which affected his ability to read, write (non-fluent aphasia), speak (complete apraxia) and swallow. After years of arduous therapy, he returned to full-time work in 2021. The VSRA has been enormously helpful with his recovery. He is pleased that he can now give back to the VSRA by volunteering as Treasurer.

Alvin was lucky that paralysis from his stroke was temporary. He can still fly-fish for trout in BC, and around the world. Alvin also has a black belt in karate and trains regularly. He enjoys travelling with his wife Elizabeth, single-cask scotch whiskies, abstract art painting, and playing with his grandson. Hopefully more are on the way!

Bill, H.BSc., was a geologist in Calgary for a major oil company, then a consulting petroleum geologist and lastly a part owner, director and executive of a public junior oil and gas company. In 1999 and 2000 at the age of 45, Bill had back-to back-strokes that brought his career to a close.

Bill and his wife Janine moved to Victoria in 2008 after five years of being snowbirds. He has enjoyed many years of co-facilitating workshops for the UVic Center of Aging, Self Management Program, being a docent at the Royal BC Museum and chairing snowbirds’ current-events discussion meetings.

Bill has served for over 10 years on the VSRA board, focused primarily on the outreach programs. Bill enjoys the peer support of the VSRA, the exercise program and the company of other people who understand what it is like to be a stroke survivor or caregiver.

Bill and Janine have a wide variety of interests. These include church thrift-shop volunteering, cruise travelling, current-events discussion groups, entertaining, men’s nights, poker nights and visiting or Zooming with family and friends.

Eric was born in Montreal, and moved to Toronto in 1970 to study at the Ontario College of Art and Design, but what he learned there failed to prepare him for getting a “real” job.

The real job came as a position at The Globe and Mail in 1979. Over the next 30 years, Eric managed to market his alleged talents to every corner of the newsroom, designing pages for every aspect of news coverage. Recognition of that work came in the form of 50 national and international awards, including the first National Newspaper Award to a Toronto newspaper designer.

In 2023, Eric had an ischemic stroke. His self-styled therapy got him over the paralysis on his right side, but he was left with aphasia. He started a speech therapy program with Susan Edwards. After successful treatment, Susan suggested Eric join the VSRA. He thinks it’s one of the best things he’s done.

In retirement, Eric enjoys photography, and teaching it at VSRA therapy sessions. He also hosts weekly film-club meetings in a home theatre he built. Eric’s three grandsons live in Berlin, Germany and are seamlessly fluent in English, French and German. As Eric likes to say “They are my proudest achievement that I had absolutely nothing to do with.”