Community gathers to mourn Leonora King, a pillar of Montreal's Park Ex

Leonora Indira King's death on Dec. 21, 2024, was sudden and unexpected. The Parc-Extension community worker had been in and out of the hospital for weeks, yet her positivity was contagious.

"It'll pass," she would say about her health issues to Rose Ndjel, the director of the non-profit Afrique au Féminin, for whom King did some work.

"It will be OK tomorrow," Ndjel said King would say. 

King was 42, ate well, practised kung fu and had too many things to return to anyway.

Earlier in November, her illness forced her to pause activities at her own non-profit, the Parc-Ex Curry Collective, a mutual-aid initiative and catering service that she founded in 2021.

Operating in one of Montreal's most multicultural neighbourhoods, the collective employs women with precarious immigration statuses. They prepare affordable meals for delivery while building up their financial autonomy in Quebec.

About a dozen women — "the ladies," as King called them — staff the collective at all times.

Whenever one was able to get on her feet and improve her situation, King would bring in a new woman, says Faiz Abhuani, the founder and director of Brique par Brique, another non-profit operating in Parc-Extension.

"It was important for her to help women, not because they're her friends [or] whatever, but because they're truly kind of overlooked or uncared for in our economy by virtue of being asylum seekers — by virtue of being isolated," he said.

After King died, Ndjel rented a 50-seat yellow bus so the Curry Collective chefs and other women from Parc-Extension could attend the memorial service for her in Ottawa. She says the funeral home wasn't big enough to contain everyone who showed up.

"You can see which impact she was having," said Ndjel.

Ndjel is organizing another memorial service for King at the Afrique au Féminin's office in Montreal Saturday so the rest of the community can get a chance to pay their respects, she says.

A Guyana native, Nadira King raised her daughter Leonora in Montreal to the sounds of soca music and cod sizzling in oil. 

It was in Guyana that King watched her mother distribute donated items and meals to the less fortunate, whenever they'd visit. It's also where she met other Guyanese women trapped in abusive relationships, much like Nadira had experienced.