Marie Warder

Marie Warder (born Marie van Zyl, 30 April 1927 – 20 October 2014) was a South African-born Canadian journalist, novelist and activist best known for her activities raising awareness about hemochromatosis. Warder founded the Hemochromatosis Society of South Africa, and the Canadian Hemochromatosis Society (CHS), and was founder and long-time president of the International Association of Hemochromatosis Societies (IAHS), writing the detailing leaflets for them all, which meant that, at that stage, every publication of the Canadian Hemochromatosis Society carried the footnote: "Produced for the International Association of Haemochromatosis Societies."

Any emerging or fledgling hemochromatosis society in other parts of the world was free to use her material, with due acknowledgement to the IAHS. Later, Guy Fernau, founder of the Haemochromatosis Society in the United Kingdom, related how, before his own material could be prepared, he only needed to scan the Canadian pamphlet and change the spelling.

Biography

Warder was born Marie van Zyl in Ficksburg, South Africa in 1927. She married Tom Warder when she was 19 and he 21, upon his return from active service in World War II, and later moved with him to Canada. Tom was diagnosed with hemochromatosis in 1975, and their daughter was diagnosed with the same disorder in 1979. These two events spurred Warder to become an activist, raising awareness of this disorder within the medical community and the general public.

Journalism career Warder's first editor was once heard to say that his young protégée must have been born with printer's ink in her veins for her journalistic "career" began at the age of nine when she won first prize in a province-wide essay competition launched by the administrator of what was then known as "the Orange Free State" in South Africa. The subject she chose was "The Natural Order of Lepidoptera" and the prize was a Queen Victoria silver penny of the kind given to deserving poor people as part of a religious ceremony held on the Thursday before Easter.

In February 1939, having already written a play, The Secret of the Kennels for the SABC children's program Young Ideas the previous year, Warder began writing stories for local newspapers, selling her first story to the Cape Argus at age 12. In 1944, she had had two stories published in the British magazine Everybody's and later wrote for several South African periodicals.

By 17, she was also the chief reporter for the Germiston Advocate. In this role, Warder was reportedly the youngest chief reporter in the world. Warder had the chance to interview, among others, Pat Boone, Field Marshal Jan Christiaan Smuts and Frances Steloff, founder of New York's Gotham Book Mart in 1920.

Warder's journalism career is most noted for her numerous pamphlets and articles on the subject of hemochromatosis.

Writing career While still living in South Africa, Warder took to writing fiction. She is the author of twenty-four novels, written in English and Afrikaans; three of which were used for some years as required reading in South African schools. (Storm Water and Samaritaan van die Sahara in Afrikaans and Penny of the Morning Star in English.) The last was commissioned for use by ESL students, and thus contained an English/Afrikaans glossary as well as comprehension questions. An updated version for general reading, without the English/Afrikaans glossary and comprehension questions, was issued in time for Christmas 2010.

Late in 2003, Warder returned to novel writing. Storm Water and With no remorse… were released simultaneously less than a year later. In late 2010, Warder was working on her 23rd book: an updated version of Penny of the Morning Star, a novel she had originally written in South Africa in the 1960s as a part of a training course in English as a second language. Her latest book, April in Portugal, was released late in May 2011, and she currently writes a series of "Little Kindle Tales for Little People."

Hemochromatosis activism Tom Warder, Marie's husband, whose fight with hemochromatosis was the catalyst for her crusade against this disorder.

In 1975, Warder's husband, Tom, who had been seriously ill for eight years, was finally diagnosed with hemochromatosis at the age of 50, and died in 1992. In 1979 their daughter, then 32, was also diagnosed with hemochromatosis. Warder concluded that the disorder was hereditary and that much of what she had been told about it was incorrect: women could indeed develop hemochromatosis, and it was not only a disorder of middle-age. Warder made it her mission to make the world aware of this disorder, including an interview with Ida Clarkson on CHEK television. For more than 28 years after that, except for a series of travel articles, Warder devoted her literary efforts to works about hemochromatosis. During this time she wrote The Bronze Killer, the first devoted entirely to the subject of the genetic disorder hemochromatosis. The term "Bronze Killer" has been used, among others, in the Toronto Star, in British newspapers, in the magazine supplement of the Johannesburg Sunday Express and in a Quebec French issue of the Reader's Digest, where it is called "La tueuse au masque du bronze".

Warder went on to found hemochromatosis societies in South Africa and Canada. and, late in life, a lay chaplain at the Delta Hospital in Ladner, British Columbia.