2023-06-29 11:31:06
After a hard fight, Kathleen Frenette, a golden colleague, left us quietly on Wednesday afternoon.
It was in July 2018 that cancer entered Kathleen’s life. And not just any: triple negative breast cancer, aggressive and generally unforgiving.
In a very personal text (available here) that she had published in The newspapershe had confided “that the ground had slipped away in front of her, that the sun had gone out and that darkness had settled” following this announcement.
And yet, those who know Kathleen know that it took a lot for her to give way to darkness, she who was easily recognized by her big, powerful laugh that filled the rooms where she was.
After working in several radio and TV stations, she had made her nest in Journal. First to news items where, thanks to her great empathy, she had made a specialty of collecting touching testimonies. Then, in recent years, she covered the Quebec court scene.
Even at the height of her illness, she reminded me all the time that the courthouse was “her” palace and that she would return to work there one day. She never tired of pacing her corridors, chatting with crown prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges and special constables, who had become a real family for her.
And besides all that, there was her big son William, of whom she was so proud and who was for her the center of her life. When we talked and I heard from her, she always spoke to me about her son. “Every second more that I can tear away from the disease and that I will be able to spend with him is well worth the hardness of the fight that I have to fight,” she said invariably.
In the same text I mentioned above, Kathleen had said that cancer had never managed to reach the essential. “He never made me lose the desire to laugh, to smile, to fight, to be positive or to be a beautiful, strong and proud person.”
And it was true.
The newspaper wishes to offer its most sincere condolences to all of Kathleen’s loved ones, and especially to her son William.
John LaRoche
Information Director
The Journal of Quebec
1688053984
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