Remembering Joanna Toole

When an airliner recently crashed near Addis Ababa, among those lost was my vibrant friend and colleague Joanna Toole. This blog page is dedicated to her memory and provides links to the other sites where she has been celebrated. Extending a virtual hug to those who lost their big sister, daughter, partner, friend and good colleague, and all who mourn her.

The ablove images are just a sample of some of the many happy times Jo shared with me and others as our family of animal advocates moved around the world to various meetings. The top left photo is from Kruger National Park in 2016. (She is grinning because she has once again contrived to get me into an incriminating photo with evidence of alcohol consumption.) Then, Provincetown (2015), Jo posing with some decorative ‘ghost gear’. Next, very characteristically, with her soul-mate Claire Bass at the IWC meeting in Slovenia in 2014. The final three photos are with another of Jo’s buddies, Claire Petros, and were again contrived by Jo who hauled us onto the main stage at the end of the Convention for Migratory Species meeting in Manilla. This was in 2017 and I think we are channeling ‘Charlie’s angels’ in the middle image.

Her flame burned bright and, in the tear-stained days since she died, there have been many accolades and an outpouring of love and appreciation that attest to the remarkable lady that we have lost. I have battled to think of the right things to say or do as the enormity of this loss continues to sink in, I hope these images bring smiles – as Jo always did.

Here is a link to some words that her close friend, Claire Bass, and I wrote which were published on the WDC website. 

Here a tribute from her employer - The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.

Here, lovely words from Oceancare.