{"id":26441,"date":"2020-04-30T14:13:18","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T18:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26441"},"modified":"2020-05-07T18:08:34","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T22:08:34","slug":"community-activist-jan-freedman-remembered-for-wonderful-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/community-activist-jan-freedman-remembered-for-wonderful-spirit\/","title":{"rendered":"Community activist Jan Freedman remembered for \u201cwonderful spirit\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jan Freedman, a long-time community leader and volunteer\nwith numerous local organizations, is being remembered for her \u201cwonderful\nspirit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Freedman, affectionately known as \u201cJan the Jam Lady\u201d\nfor her tireless work at the Aurora Farmers\u2019 Market and the renowned jams and\njellies that came out of Jan\u2019s Country Pantry, died of heart failure Sunday,\nApril 26, at the age of 74.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Freedman served for many years in leadership\npositions with the Aurora Farmers\u2019 Market, the Aurora Seniors\u2019 Centre, and the\nAurora Public Library Board, and was a passionate contributor to Aurora\u2019s arts\nand culture community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a big loss to the community,\u201d said Councillor\nWendy Gaertner, a long-time friend of Ms. Freedman. \u201cShe had a lot of health\nchallenges and handled them with such grace and continued being such a\nproductive member of the Aurora community through the work of the Seniors\u2019 Centre\nand Farmers\u2019 Market, and also beloved as \u2018Jan the Jam Lady’. I have such a\ngreat respect for her spirit because I think it was her spirit that kept her\ngoing. She meant a lot to a lot of people in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A native of Montreal, Ms. Freedman told The Auroran in\n2010 her volunteer and leadership work at the Farmers\u2019 Market gave her a \u201cnew\nand wonderful dimension to her life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am all about my Farmers\u2019 Market,\u201d she said at the time.\n\u201cOtherwise, I don\u2019t know what I would be doing. Getting ready for the Market,\nbeing at the Market, forces me to stretch myself when I\u2019m not sure what I would\ndo otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having waged her first battle with cancer aged just 13,\nthe experience made her want to live every day to the fullest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can\u2019t afford to let an opportunity or great day go by\nand not do anything about it,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m a scrapper. I didn\u2019t want to be\nsick [at 13]; I wanted to get home, to be with my friends, my bike, and my dog.\nDoctors credited that to helping me pull through.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon her recovery, Ms. Freedman studied at the University\nof British Columbia before transferring to Ottawa\u2019s Carleton University to\nstudy sociology. From there, she completed her masters through the London\nSchool of Economics and York University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following school, she held down\nmany jobs in provincial and municipal government, but a combination of\nrecurring illness and frustration with inevitable red tape prevented her from\n\u201creally establishing a career.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was able to stay home and\ntake care of her daughter, Laura, and her experiences in motherhood \u2013 both hers\nand looking back on her childhood with her own mother \u2013 that set her on the\npath to preserving nature\u2019s bounty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn a way, I\u2019ve done a lot of\nthings I wish my mother had done but didn\u2019t,\u201d she said. \u201cShe worked, she wasn\u2019t\nhome when I got home from school and I hated that. I wanted to be home for\nLaura. You only get one crack at being a parent and we were fortunate at that\npoint that I was financially able to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She first began experimenting\nwith preserves in her mid-20s, beginning with wild strawberries. A passion\nflourished and, once settled in North York, she made extensive use of her\nkitchen garden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She first became involved with\nthe Farmers\u2019 Market in 2006 where she first sold just a couple of dozen jars\nfrom a corner of another vendor\u2019s booth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cI made $40 that\nday and I was ecstatic,\u201d she recalled. \u201cIt just grew from there and then I\nmoved over and developed my own space.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her space grew along with the Aurora Farmers\u2019 Market and\nher Jan\u2019s Country Pantry tent was a popular destination for hundreds each\nSaturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As her involvement with the Aurora Farmers\u2019 Market grew,\nso too did her involvement at the Aurora Seniors\u2019 Centre, rising from an\neveryday member to an integral member of their leadership team, eventually\nassuming the role of Vice President of the Aurora Seniors\u2019 Association and even\ntreading the boards as an actress with their Senior Stars program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A highlight of Jan\u2019s Country Pantry each fall was the\ncreation of a specially-themed, sometimes exotic creation, to coincide with the\nAurora Public Library\u2019s OneBookOneAurora campaign, as well as soups which were\nladled out for Culture Days each September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJan touched so many of us with her\npassion for life and for her many contributions to our community,\u201d said Reccia\nMandelcorn of the Aurora Public Library. \u201cI had the privilege to work with her\non various cultural initiatives and to have benefited from her governance on\nthe Aurora Public Library Board. I will\nmiss our conversations about theatre, music and fashion. I will miss the\nlimited edition jam she created annually as part of the Library\u2019s\nOneBookOneAurora community initiative. And I will very much miss my dear\nfriend.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Freedman is survived by her husband of 42 years, Frank Condlln, and her daughter Laura Condlln (Jane Gooderham).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jan Freedman, a long-time community leader and volunteer with numerous local organizations, is being remembered for her \u201cwonderful spirit.\u201d Ms. Freedman, affectionately known as \u201cJan the Jam Lady\u201d for her tireless work at the Aurora Farmers\u2019 Market and the renowned jams and jellies that came out of Jan\u2019s Country Pantry, died of heart failure Sunday, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/2020-04-30-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6St","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-13 10:22:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}