Obit

Tamara Gignac, 41

FOLLOWING AN 11-month battle with stage 4 metastatic colon cancer, Calgary Herald journalist Tamara Gignac passed away May 29 shortly after coming home from a trip to Mexico with her family. She was 41.

Gignac’s career at the Calgary Herald began in April 2000 as a business reporter, where she mostly wrote about technology and companies such as Shaw Rogers and VisuaLabs. She would later join the Herald’s city desk as a reporter,  and then as an editor (Calgary Herald, “Beloved mom, wife, Herald reporter passes away,” May 31, 2015).
Last Mother’s Day, Gignac wrote an article about her experience and her fears in facing cancer, as well as her hopes and dreams for those she will be leaving behind. The article, which turned out to be her last piece, was published by the Herald on May 7.

“She was a journalist,” said her husband Heath McCoy, attributing Gignac’s need to share her story as a natural reaction to her condition. “The way she shared her fight, it meant a lot to a lot of people.” (Calgary Sun, “Calgary journalist Tamara Gignac’s brave battle with terminal cancer comes to an end,” May 30, 2015)

Gignac is survived by her husband, Heath McCoy, and their children Bronwyn and Finn.

Stevenson Jacobs, 37

FORMER ASSOCIATED Press (AP) journalist Stevenson Jacobs died Monday June 8 from an apparent heart attack at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. He was 37.

While with AP, Jacobs covered political turmoil in Haiti and broke news throughout the Caribbean. Before moving to New York in October 2007, he was based in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where he had been the resident AP correspondent. Jacobs was also an AP correspondent in Jamaica, as well as a reporter and editor in San Juan, Puerto Rico, covering elections, major hurricanes and other breaking news. He left AP in July 2010. (Washington Post, “Stevenson Jacobs, former AP correspondent, dies at 37,” June 9, 2015)

Colleagues remember Jacobs as a “wise and patient mentor.” “I looked up to him when I was starting out in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and will always look up to his example,” said Jonathan M. Katz, former AP correspondent who filled in Jacobs’ post in Haiti.

Jacobs is survived by his wife Atzin Gaytan, and by his parents Sharon and Steve Jacobs and his brother Trent.