Editor's Note, Fall 2024

I lost my mother this fall. I remember the words of many friends, especially those who have experienced a more severe loss than I have and had lost their parents earlier on in life. I’ve often been told that when you lose both parents, that’s the first time you really feel that you’re no longer a child, that you’re deprived of parental care and protection, and only then do you realize that you’ve finally grown up. This fall I experienced that feeling precisely, but above all, sadness for my mother. I miss her spirit, her enormous love for life, her boundless energy and inexhaustible optimism. She enjoyed every moment of life, and this world, which she loved so much, now remains a void that is hard to describe.
At the beginning of October, on a visit to the Canadian Diocese and the Serbian community, on the occasion of the jubilee of two churches in Canada, was His Eminence Serbian Patriarch Mr. Porphyry, to whom we have devoted a good part of this issue. In this issue, we interviewed several successful women from the diaspora, Gordana Koops, a businesswoman and engineer, Tanja Vrećo, writer, and Natalija Zarić, owner of a hair salon and cafeteria in Toronto. As usual, there are reports from our city on the topic of volunteering, the circular economy, as well as an article from the city’s historical archive about the first settlers in Toronto. We also deal with a topic that has always been intriguing and is still relevant - about the immortality and impermanence of the human soul. Our readers who are originally from the Valjevo district will be delighted by the report about Valjevo. We write about the 120 years of the Politika newspaper, about the exhibition in the Historical Museum of Serbia and much more from Canada and our homeland alike.
It is sad news that Živanka Živka Perić, a prominent cultural worker in the Serbian community in Toronto and a collaborator of SAN since its inception, has left us forever. She was also the editor of the Book Display section. In this issue you can read more about her life and achievements. Živka was also a mother. My mother.

In Toronto, October 2024
Vesna Nedic, Editor-In-Chief