Paz Buttedahl

Dr. Paz Buttedahl Dr. Paz Buttedahl, 65, passed away peacefully on October 8, 2007. She is predeceased by her loving husband of 25 years, Dr. Knute Buttedahl. She is survived by her husband, John K. Park, daughter Maria Beck Buttedahl (Bob Beck), son John Buttedahl (Lisa Ferrari), brother Valerio Goycoolea (Rebecca Palma), and sisters Sofia Goycoolea (Richard E. Lane) and Loreto Goycoolea. Paz was a proud aunt of Claudia Goycoolea (Mauricio Meyer), Alexandre Coulon (Maureen Coulon-Menashe), Oliver Goycoolea and great-aunt to Nicholas Meyer. She was a loving stepmother to Kim and Gary Buttedahl and proud grandmother to Caleb and Alisha Grunert. Her family wishes to join in expressing all their love and appreciation for the extraordinary person Paz was, and for the outstanding contributions she made to the world. Paz was born in Santiago, Chile, and created a vast network of friends, colleagues and students throughout the world, garnered through a long and distinguished career. The breadth of her experience spanned work with universities, international development organizations and agencies, and the Canadian military. Whatever the setting, common threads ran through all of her work: a passion for fostering international and inter-cultural understanding; a focus on sustainable development; and a belief in the possibility of creating an equitable and socially just world. The academic portion of Paz's career involved teaching at several universities in Canada, the United States, and Latin America, including a faculty position at the University of British Columbia and most recently, at Royal Roads University. Her work at the universities was always characterized by a passionate commitment to her students, the injection of an international perspective and comparative education approach to her courses, and a desire to create international partnerships linking students and educators from the developing world with those in Canada. Paz was sought after as a researcher and educator specializing in international development issues, and was a consultant with many international agencies and organizations. These included the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Organization of American States (OAS). Paz also worked for almost a decade with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Ottawa. As Deputy Director of the Fellowships and Awards Division, her focus was on the development of human resources and the strengthening of institutions in the developing world through the education and training of their researchers and project staff. Paz strongly believed in learning as a crucial component in the achievement of sustainable development. In the early 1990s, as international development issues became more and more intertwined with issues of security, Paz was invited to attend the National Defense College in Kingston, Ontario, where she also contributed as the academic advisor to the Commandant. A subsequent posting to the Centre for National Security Studies provided a base for her research linking issues of sustainable development to those of human security. Paz's vast storehouse of knowledge and experience found a home and became invested in the creation of the Master of Arts in Human Security and Peacebuilding (MAHSP) program at Royal Roads University in Victoria, B.C. As founder and program head, Paz worked tirelessly to build the program and to ensure its sustainability and its relevance to the international development and security issues of today's world. The MAHSP program was to be Paz's final contribution in a lifetime of notable achievements. In spite of failing health during the past months, she found strength in providing ongoing leadership to the program and in planning for its future. Paz, with her indomitable spirit and her vision of a world that might be, has enriched and influenced the lives of hundreds of friends and colleagues around the world. Her loss will be deeply mourned. A celebration of her life will be held on at 1pm on October 21 at Royal Roads University, 2nd Floor Grant Building, 2005 Sooke Rd., Victoria, BC.