Holly Kramer, a force in the Toronto harm reduction field and a fierce advocate for those affected by adoption, died on Sunday, at age 58, after a battle with cancer, according to friends.

She is survived by her granddaughter, Taegan, her daughter, Caroline, her birth mother, Janis and her sisters, Maryann and Kellie.

Kramer was someone who “told it like it was” and stood up against injustice, according to friends and colleagues.

“She was working until the end because it was important to her,” said Walter Cavalieri, founding director of the Canadian Harm Reduction Network.

Kramer worked for Street Outreach Services from the late nineties until 2002, after which she became coordinator for the Toronto Harm Reduction Task Force. After the task force ended, she became a member of the Canadian Harm Reduction Network in 2013.

During that time, she coordinated the production of “two peer manuals, a series of digital stories about harm reduction, a video about methadone maintenance and one about responding to an overdose in the workplace, a research project on the quality of services available to people using drugs, material on how to maintain housing,” and more, according to Cavalieri.

She was especially proud, Cavalieri said, of her work with University of Toronto students. Through the Centre for Community Partnerships, Kramer worked with students in the pharmacology and toxicology program, teaching them about harm reduction.

“She really made her mark with students in our program by broadening their compassion or empathy for a community that they may not have had much experience with,” said Michelle Arnot, an associate professor in pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Toronto.

Arnot – who taught one of the courses Kramer partnered with, which paired students with harm reduction groups – said Kramer would regularly take on 10 or 12 students herself.

“She had a big heart and always made time for the students on top of her regular job, who she was supervising out of pure volunteerism,” Arnot said. “You can imagine the amount of time it took. She would meet them at all places, at all hours. She also took a very personal interest in all the students.”

Rebecca Wolfe, coordinator of community development for the Centre for Community Partnerships at U of T, said Kramer “dedicated her life to this work and went so far above and beyond the call of duty.”

“I think she’s one of those people who wasn’t recognized as much as she could have been or should have been for all that she did,” Wolfe said.

Kramer’s granddaughter, whom she raised, Taegan Perez, said Kramer left the harm reduction field “in a better position.”

“She was a very organized person and made a big difference in helping that field get on its feet a bit more and taken a bit more seriously” Perez said.

Kramer was also president of Parent Finders Inc., a non-profit that helped adult adoptees, birth parents and adopted parents search for biological family members.

Kramer, who was adopted, tracked down her birth mother in the 1970s. She helped many others reunite with family members, said Dale Kuehl, a close friend. This included former Ontario MPP Marilyn Churley, who she assisted in tracking down her son.

“My family never felt complete until I was able to reunite with my son and that’s thanks to Holly,” Churley said. “She helped people understand that wanting to know about their roots and to reunite with biological family members was human and normal at a time when society as a whole thought it was unacceptable.”

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Kramer’s death is the second the Toronto harm reduction community has experienced recently. Raffi Balian, coordinator of the South Riverdale Community Health Centre’s COUNTERfit Harm Reduction program, died on Feb. 16.

“It’s been an enormously difficult few weeks for the harm reduction community,” Cavalieri said. “These are two irreplaceable people who have left. We can’t replace them but we have to keep the work going.”

Councillor Joe Cressy of Ward 20 will introduce a condolence motion for Kramer at the next city council meeting. A condolence motion for Balian will be introduced by Councillor Paula Fletcher, and seconded by Cressy.

“I thought it was critical not just to celebrate their lives and recognize the work they did…but also to use their untimely passing to further the call for action on their lives work which is harm reduction and the health of people who use drugs,” Cressy said.