Remembering Jill Taylor, Hay River teacher and youth activist, dead at 52

Jill Taylor, a beloved educator in Hay River and a member of the Northwest Territories Education Hall of Fame, died Oct. 31 in Edmonton. 

Her friends say she died after complications from surgery, she was 52.

Hay River Mayor Brad Mapes lived next door to Taylor and her family.

"She was just steadily bringing forth ideas that would make the community better," Mapes said.

"Anytime you'd see her in the backyard she had a comment about something new that we should be doing in Hay River. There have been so many people reaching out [after] her death," he said.  

"It was so unexpected that it's tough to understand," he said. 

Taylor, from Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia, moved to the North with her husband in the late 1980s. She taught in Cambridge Bay, Norman Wells and Hay River.

In 2010, Taylor became an advocate against drunk driving after a drunk driver killed her son, who was a passenger in the car.   

She helped create the Lights On program. It gives students in Hay River a place to go on Friday and Saturday nights to avoid partying.

"She never knew what the word 'no' was so she always found ways to find the funds," Mapes said. "The program is such a great hit with our kids and it's truly because of her actions."

April Glaicer, a long time friend of Taylor's, is one of many community members still in shock.  

"Certainly what we're seeing and feeling downtown is just devastation in the community," Glacier said. "She's going to leave a hole in our community that I'm not sure could ever close or be healed."

Judy Goucher also knew Taylor well, when Taylor moved to Hay River eight years ago.

"I've got a lot of good memories but she went too soon. We weren't ready," Goucher said.

"She's left a huge set of footprints in the snow that we're all going to have to fill."

In 2013, Taylor was named to the Northwest Territories' Education Hall of Fame, and received the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2014 for her work as an advocate for youth at risk.

The funeral service is being held on Saturday at the Diamond Jenness Secondary School at 4 p.m.