ARBOUR, Frances
1942 - 2025
FRANCES ARBOUR
1942 - 2025
A formidable, spirited advocate
It is with profound sorrow and much gratitude for a life well-lived that we announce the sudden passing of Frances Elizabeth Arbour at the age of 82 on March 26, 2025 at The Glebe Centre in Ottawa, Ontario. Frances, the eldest of eight children, was born in Windsor, Ontario on July 14, 1942 to Francis Stanley (Stan) Arbour and Mary (nee Dottor). Beloved wife of the late Robert (Bob) Carty and loving mother of Michael Carty (Daniel). Preceded in death by her parents, her sister Mary Catherine (Marcy) Edwards and husband David and by her brother Gregory Arbour (Roxann MacDonald). Survived by her brother Thomas Arbour (Helen), her sister Lucia St. Aubin (John), her brother John Arbour (Shirley Dolan), her sister Jane Arbour (George Hack), her brother Stanley Arbour and many siblings-in-law and nieces and nephews.
After Catholic grade and high school, Frances attended the University of Windsor. Interested in working overseas, she entered a missionary religious community, Our Lady’s Missionaries (OLM). Following spiritual formation, she studied political science at St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto, graduating with a B.A.
With the OLMs she worked in Aguascalientes, Mexico, learning Spanish and teaching English. “I was deeply affected working in a poor barrio. I was exposed to Ivan Illich and the community and spirituality in Cuernavaca where Sergio Méndez Arceo was the progressive bishop.”
After three years, Frances returned to work in Toronto with the Catholic charity Development and Peace, doing adult education about third world issues. With Catholic youth worker Bob Carty, she returned to Mexico on an educational tour for youth, hosted by CENCOS, a Mexican NGO active in press analysis and community organizing.
After returning to Toronto, Frances and Bob both became volunteers with the Latin American Working Group (LAWG).
On September 6, 1975, Frances married Bob Carty who became a respected journalist and producer.
Putting her Spanish to use, Frances volunteered to assist refugees at Toronto’s Welcome House. Like other LAWG members, she assisted the Inter-Church Committee on Chile. In 1976 she was asked to accompany three federal MPs as guide and translator on a tour of the military dictatorships in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, connecting with local human rights defenders and collecting testimony from families and defenders. She edited their final report, “One Gigantic Prison”, dealing with issues of torture, imprisonment, and forced disappearances.
Based on the report’s findings, the Canadian churches decided to broaden the Chile Committee into the Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America (ICCHRLA). Frances became Executive Director. In that role, she continued investigative work on the three South American dictatorships, but included the increasingly desperate situations in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. She cultivated partnerships with local Catholic, Protestant and secular groups, gathering evidence for well-documented situation reports. These were the basis for advocacy with the Canadian government and were submitted and used by the World Council of Churches and the United Nations Human Rights Commission in its periodic evaluation of conditions in the hemisphere. The evidence informed the advocacy and assistance to cases by the Inter-Church Refugee Committee and the joint educational campaign, Ten Days for World Development, contributing to an advocacy network in communities across Canada.
Frances led periodic fact-finding delegations to Central America and welcomed many visitors on speaking tours to Canada. In 1985, her work was given Special Recognition with the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award by the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies.
Frances took an active role with other academic and NGO personnel in developing and pursuing policy initiatives for peace and human rights in the bitter conflicts in Central America.
Much later, Frances found the time to develop her own theological reflections for an international consultation of Third World Theologians.
Frances and Bob were joined by son Michael Timothy on August 28, 1978.
In 1988 Frances became counsellor for Guatemala with the Project Counselling Service for Refugees. Her family lived in Costa Rica for security reasons, while she travelled for work in Guatemala and Mexico. Collaborating with OXFAM and the Archdiocesan Human Rights Committee, she was focused on engagement with peasant and displaced indigenous (mostly Mayan) women. Frances noted the women’s progress from practical needs to empowerment, “speaking in their own voices, strengthening their own women’s organizations and becoming agents of their own development.”
After returning to Canada, Frances worked for several years with the Canadian Health Coalition, based at the Canadian Labour Congress. From 1996 she was engaged in a church-supported follow-up to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, including the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
Bob Carty passed away in Ottawa on September 21, 2014 (64) after a distinguished career of three decades as a journalist and radio producer with the CBC. With Frances he shared a common engagement with human rights, social justice and the peoples of Latin America. Bob and son Michael shared a lively engagement in music and recorded a series of compositions.
The transition to a new life on her own led Frances to seniors’ residences in Ottawa South and the Glebe. She discovered an interest in art, developing talent in painting in several mediums. She was involved in residence life and governance and became an active member of the congregation of the Church of the Ascension in Ottawa. Surrounding her was a circle of friends, family and former colleagues, at dinner parties, concerts and visits to Ottawa repertory movie theatres.
Interested in local and national politics, Frances was a frequent and incisive correspondent with the Prime Minister and other political figures.
Join us in this vigil
and you will know what it is to dream!
Then you will know how marvelous it is
to live threatened with Resurrection!
Julia Esquivel
The funeral will be at 1:00 pm on Friday, May 9 at Church of the Ascension, 253 Echo Drive in Ottawa.
As an expression of sympathy, donations in memory of Frances can be made to Our Lady’s Missionaries, Inter Pares, Amnesty International Canada or Oxfam Canada.
