HAYES, Marla J.

Passed away peacefully at the North Bay Regional Health Center, from pancreatic cancer on Saturday February 22nd, 2020. She was born in 1953 in New Liskeard, Ontario. Predeceased by parents Geraldine and Nate Hayes and sister Sharon (Brian Ritchie). Marla is survived by nieces Cara (JP Poudrier), Tanya (Shawn Plamondon), Meagan (Jonathan D'Sousa) and great nieces and nephews Aydan, Ellie, Tessa, Rowyn, Landon and Rhys.

Marla's lifetime battle with MD didn't stop her from earning a B.Sc from Trent University, B.Ed from Queen’s and sharing her creative side as a newspaper/magazine journalist, columnist, photographer, novelist, actor and screenwriter.

She will be missed by a close group of Traill College friends, a large international community of screenwriters/filmmakers, and special friends Martha & Albert Attema and Angela Falkowska.

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She was my student twice when I taught a summer creative writing course at Canadore College in North Bay, for two summers, four years apart. We shared a liking for Quantum Leap, a television series starring the young Scott Bakula. she wanted to write an episode. She was so eager and talented and funny and cheerful, in spite of what I later learned was her chronic, never-ending ill health (muscular dystrophy). She did so much in defiance of her odds. She went to Hollywood a couple of times, if I remember rightly, and had her picture taken with the afore-mentioned Scott Bakula - I don’t know how but she was always enterprising and persistent. She made things happen - not enough as it turned out—but so much.

to be continued…