Former Surrey school board trustee dies
Posted December 6, 2010 2:31 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
SURREY (NEWS1130) – Longtime Surrey school board trustee Heather Stilwell lost her two-year battle with breast cancer over the weekend at age 66. She stepped down from the board in 2008 to focus on her battle with the disease.
She was well known for fighting against same-sex books in the district in the late 1990s as the board’s chair, but Children and Family Development Minister Mary Polak says there is much more to her legacy.
“It would be disappointing if the only thing she’s remembered for, is for the three books. That came out of a long career, where she put forward the interests of parents as the primary educators of their children,” relays Polak, who was a board trustee during the book-ban fight.
Polak says she never would have entered politics if Stilwell hadn’t pushed her.
