N.S. HIV/AIDS activist has died

Janet Conners, a crusading HIV/AIDS activist in Nova Scotia who many years ago with her late husband, Randy, were in the thick of the tainted-blood compensation battle in Canada, died last weekend.

She died Saturday at age 66.

Conners was living in Cape Breton “to be near her grandchildren which she adored,” a recent Facebook posting from the AIDS Coalition of Nova Scotia says.

She was an outspoken, former coalition board member and “a significant ally of the queer community,” it says.

Randy, a hemophiliac, died in 1994. He had become infected with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) through tainted blood products, and Janet was infected after sexual relations with her husband.

Janet Conners was diagnosed with HIV in 1989. She founded a national organization for people secondarily infected with HIV.

Janet and Randy had been instrumental in pushing for a public inquiry in this country that examined a flawed blood system. Janet testified during the proceedings, known as the Krever Inquiry, the Halifax Rainbow Encyclopedia says.

Her impact statement has been posted online by the encyclopedia.

“In 1989 there was stigma and a seemingly acceptable discrimination toward persons with HIV,” Conners said in her statement. “We were overwhelmed and alone,” she said in her comments to the inquiry.

Janet was bestowed with honorary degrees from at least two universities and received other public recognition of her efforts surrounding HIV/AIDS awareness and tainted blood.

In 2001, Janet and Randy were awarded the Meritorious Service Medal (civil division) for their advocacy on the tainted-blood front, and their fight for government compensation for Canadian victims.

Randy was given the honour posthumously, a Governor General of Canada website says, as he’d died seven years earlier.

Michael Lightstone is a freelance reporter living in Dartmouth