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BORN
1961
DIED
2022
MARION BOULBY Obituary
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Memories and Condolences
for MARION BOULBY
19 Entries
Lindsay Elliott
November 28, 2025
I remember Marion Boulby as my closest friend in Grade 4 at Queen Elizabeth Elementary School in Vancouver, B.C. I believe it was about 1970/71 as we were 9 going on 10 if I remember correctly, and we were in Mrs. Booth's homeroom class, I think. Marion would often invite me home to her house, which was a couple of blocks west of our school down 16th avenue, for lunch. Her mom would make us sliced Bavarian meatloaf sandwiches with ketchup, and her father would join us for lunch. I remember he would eat his sliced sandwich meat with a knife and fork and would be dressed in elegant clothes with old-fashioned chain-link arm bands to keep his sleeves up at the table, which I thought was all incredible. They were the warmest and friendliest of people. Marion would also invite me over after school, and we would have a wonderful time playing together and watching Get Smart, which was on T.V. every day after school lol. I sat next to her in our classroom, and I loved her handwriting, which I tried to emulate. The family I believe moved away sometime after that, and we lost touch as childhood friends often do. I was so interested to hear that she went on to study and teach history, as I majored in history as well out at UBC. I have such fond memories of Marion as my special friend that year in elementary school, and such lovely memories of her home and parents and family.
Rest in peace my childhood friend from long ago.
Lindsay Elliott, Vancouver
John Calvert
August 11, 2022
I knew Marion when she taught at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. I taught at the other university across town, and we would periodically get together for conversation. Marion was passionate about her subject and dedicated to human rights. My sincere condolences to her family.
Sarah Boulby
April 28, 2022
Marion and Thomas on Christmas morning, early 2000s.
How you can show support
Sarah Boulby
April 28, 2022
Marion, Annette, and unknown friend in Tunis, early 1980s
Sarah Boulby
April 28, 2022
Jean, Gill, Marion, and Sarah in France, 1971
Sarah Boulby
April 28, 2022
Mark, Marion, and Sarah at Spanish Banks in Vancouver - early 70s
Sarah Boulby
April 28, 2022
Jean, Marion, and Sarah on Easter Sunday 50 years ago.
Sarah Boulby
April 28, 2022
Jean, Marion, Sarah, and Portia the cat at the border entering Canada in 1970.
Sarah
April 28, 2022
Sarah
April 28, 2022
Sarah
April 28, 2022
Some baby photos
Virginia (Ginny) Aksan
April 25, 2022
Dear Sarah, Perry and Tom,
The picture was taken in 2004, in Omaha, Nebraska, where Marion was then teaching. Oktay and his friend Kadir were on a cross-country jaunt and decided to stop in for dinner with Marion. Both my husband and Marion remembered it as a fine evening.
It is also the way I would like to remember my friend, PhD schoolmate and sometime companion to annual conferences like those of the Middle East Studies Association.
Marion was deeply passionate about our social responsibility about getting the Palestinian story told. She also had a wonderful sense of the ridiculousness of life. And she loved your Tom.
They leave us but we do not forget them.
Love, Ginny Aksan
Gregory Radwan
April 24, 2022
My best memories of Marion center around Friday evenings. We met at Queens University through the Debating Union and used to regularly de-stress on Fridays (over some Ballentine's scotch) as we solved the world's problems and planned for the future. We had many mutual student friends and she was always positive and willing to share in her adventures. After a gap of a few years, we connected again in Toronto where she worked so hard on her studies. We used to meet over elaborate and fun meals at her parent's condo and I got to know the other tenacious Boulby women and her patient father. She worked so hard and overcame much to achieve the professional success that she so richly deserved. Always a positive influence with an infectious joy of life, Marion, my friend, you will be so dearly missed.
Linda Northrup
April 24, 2022
I came to know Marion in 1989 while working on The Economics of Peace in the Middle East Project at the Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, the purpose of which was to gather evidence for the importance of economic relationships in the region as a foundation for a future peace. The project, under the direction of Prof. Andrew Watson, Department of Economics, at the University of Toronto, resulted in a publication, "Economic Cooperation in the Middle East: An Annotated Bibliography," a copy of which was delivered to Yasser Arafat ! during a stay in Toronto, and others. At this time Marion was a PhD candidate in the Department of Middle East and Islamic Studies (MEI), now Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations (NMC), at the University of Toronto. She received her PhD in 1996 and a revised version of her doctoral thesis on the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan was subsequently published.
On completing the Economics of Peace project, our paths parted. I was appointed as a faculty member in MEI while Marion was appointed as a faculty member at the University of Nebraska. It wasn´t until sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s that we reconnected and that by pure chance.
One day, I got on the elevator in my apartment building in Toronto. Two other women were already aboard. Both had their faces cast toward the floor, but something made me recognize Marion. Marion!!!! She then introduced me to her mother, Jean Boulby, who was just moving into my building. Not long after, Marion moved from Nebraska back to Canada where she had been appointed as a faculty member at Trent University. After living in Lindsay, Ontario near Trent for a couple of years, she moved to Toronto and into my building to be near her mother while commuting to Trent where she was a devoted and well-liked teacher, productive researcher, and engaged faculty member.
Marion was a courageous fighter for the rights of the disenfranchised and downtrodden, especially in the Middle East as well as an analyst of important political, social and economic movements in the region. She worked tirelessly for many years in support of the projects sponsored by Near East Cultural and Educational Foundation concerned with Palestinian rights and then as its president. In that context Marion organized a series of annual lectures in memory of Prof. James Graf, the founder of NECEF, that brought a number of important speakers to Toronto, including among others: Daniel Ellsberg, famous as the person responsible for the leak of the Pentagon Papers, but who was also involved in antiwar activism related to Iraq and Iran; John Mearsheimer, the American political scientist at the University of Chicago who was concerned with the Israel Lobby and it impact on US foreign policy; and Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian legislator and leader of a Palestinian national initiative whom she helped to host in collaboration with Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East.
In addition to the publication of her revised PhD thesis, she co-edited a volume, Migration, Refugees and Human Security in MENA (2018), and published numerous articles, Marion had been researching the history of the fabled American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem, a gathering place for diplomats, journalists, academics, tourists, and others-and thus a focal point of history, perhaps even intrigue, in the region! This would have been a fascinating read had Marion been able to complete it. Most regrettably, this work, given events in the Middle East, her academic schedule, and now her passing, will not be brought to fruition.
I remember Marion as a thoughtful, kind-hearted friend, intellectually and actively engaged in the issues of the day while putting her many talents to use to promote a more just and peaceful Middle East region and world.
Van Nguyen-Marshall
April 23, 2022
Marion was a popular professor and a generous colleague at Trent. She will be missed. My deep sympathies for her family and friends.
James Reilly
April 21, 2022
I met Marion in the late 1980s when she arrived at the University of Toronto with her MA in hand from the University of London. She had completed her MA thesis on the Islamist movement in Tunisia. I supervised her PhD dissertation on the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, which she completed in 1996. She published a revised version a few years later titled The Muslim Brotherhood and the Kings of Jordan, 1945-1993. It was the first full-length study of the subject in international scholarship. In the meantime, Marion had gotten a teaching job at the University of Nebraska, before moving to Trent University where she spent the rest of her career. She was a dedicated and respected teacher, a pioneer who offered remote learning courses before they became ubiquitous, and she continued publishing on topics of Islamism and of human rights. Her last publication (2018) was a co-edited book titled Migration, Refugees, and Human Security in MENA. Marion was organizationally active in the 2000s as head of the Near East Cultural and Educational Foundation (NECEF), a Canadian association dedicated to Palestinian rights. I knew her as a colleague with wide-ranging interests, a sense of adventure, and dedication to the well-being of people in the Middle East and around the world.
Janet Miron
April 21, 2022
My sincerest condolences to all of Marion's friends and family.
Jennine Hurl-Eamon
April 21, 2022
The History Department at Trent heard this news with very heavy hearts. We will really miss Marion and our thoughts go out to her family, her students, and her colleagues around the world. As the Chair of the department, I offer our sincerest sympathies.
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