MALVERN, St Elizabeth — She is most remembered as a champion of women’s rights in Jamaica and abroad.

However, in her native Stanmore, wider Malvern and southern St Elizabeth, Dr Glenda Simms affectionately called “Peggy’, who died in Canada on the last day of 2021 at age 82, also commanded admiration, love and respect for her community activism at every level.

St Elizabeth residents recall her commitment to ‘people first’ regardless of other considerations.

Frank Witter of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), Member of Parliament for St Elizabeth South Eastern, told the Observer of his first contact with Simms in the 1990s when she reached across political party lines to get his help with a women’s project.

Back then, Simms – a friend of then Cabinet Minister Portia Simpson Miller in the People’s National Party Government (PNP) led by PJ Patterson – was in charge of the Bureau of Women’s Affairs.

Witter was the JLP caretaker for St Elizabeth South Eastern, shadowing the then Member of Parliament representing the PNP, the late, legendary Derrick Rochester.

Witter said Simms, who had spent decades in Canada prior to returning to Jamaica in the 90s, “came and found me at my home (close to Junction) one day”.

She told him about her plans to set up a wing of the women’s centre in Junction.

Sometime later, Simms returned with what Witter described as “her full team” from the Women’s Bureau and asked him to serve as interim head of a group that would oversee the setting up of the project.

Quite apart from the crossing of the political divide, Witter was taken aback because “she asked me to lead as a male person”.

Simms response was that she wanted the “best person” and further that her responsibility was not just to women but to “gender affairs”.

Thereafter, Witter was impressed by Simms’s energy and know-how, as she secured the assistance of the Social Development Commission (SDC) to write a project document and approached bauxite/alumina company, Alpart, to set up a bammy factory in New Building, close to Nain in the Myersville area.

A flat, circle-shaped bread, bammy, renowned for its high-fibre content, is made from drought-resistant cassava, grown in large quantities across St Elizabeth.

Witter said Simms’s vision in pressing for the bammy factory was “about employment and empowerment for women”.

In later years, even after Simms tenure at the Women’s Bureau ended, she and Witter kept in close touch.

Indeed, during Witter’s first stint as MP from 2007- 2011, Simms became chairman of the St Alban’s Primary and Infant School Board in Stanmore, playing a lead role in saving it from closure as attendance dwindled. As a child in the 1950s and early 60s, Simms had attended St Alban’s.

“I will always remember her for her strong advocacy,” said Witter.

Custos of St Elizabeth, Beryl Rochester, who chaired a ‘friends’ organisation in support of the Women’s Bureau unit in Junction, recalled Simms’s efforts in helping teenaged girls from across St Elizabeth – who had dropped out of school because of pregnancy – to attend the centre for classes.

“She (Simms) was very passionate about helping these young women to get a second chance”, said Rochester, who is the widow of Derrick Rochester.

Chalder Senior, a former community representative on the St Alban’s school board, told the Observer about Simms’s commitment to her native Stanmore, a wind-swept farming community a mile or two south west of Malvern.

“Even when she was in Canada, she always kept up with the progress of community members, especially young people,” Senior said.

On returning to Jamaica, Simms became central to community life, alternating between Kingston, her mother’s home in Stanmore and a house she bought in Malvern.

“When we (Stanmore residents) noticed the decline in the student population … at St Alban’s, although she was retired, we asked her to head the school board and without hesitation she took on the task of setting the school on a solid foundation,” said Senior.

Chris Dubidad, who became principal at St Alban’s Primary in 2014, spoke of Simms’s annoyance that there were not enough books “depicting black lives and families” available to schools.

“She (Simms) was passionate about the type and quality of education our children received. She was particularly concerned that our educational system and our textbooks were Eurocentric,” he added.

Bothered by the high degree of poverty and economic dependency among rural women, Simms in 2008 launched the St Elizabeth Women (SEW) Ltd, a social action volunteer agency aimed at empowering women to deal with economic and social stress.

She told the Observer in 2011 that sub-groups of SEW had been established in Malvern, Treasure Beach, Top Hill, Retrieve, Stanmore, and Schoolfield.

“Our women are learning all the time about how to help themselves,” she proudly declared.

At her home in Malvern, Simms hosted numerous training sessions and seminars providing guidance for women mainly, but also men, focusing on such elements as value-added products to enhance the commercial value of farming, sexual health and sensible use of contraceptives.

The United Nations agency, UNAIDS, National Family Planning Board, the Rural Agricultural Development Authority, the charity group Food for the Poor, and the SDC, were among public and private organisations partnering at such sessions.

Visitors would typically come across an array of traditional Jamaican foods including bammy, puddings, traditional cakes and edibles of all sorts made from local farm produce, as well as craft work using indigenous plant materials such as thatch, bamboo and seeds to make baskets, bags and decorations.

Traditional embroidering, crocheting and weaving were usually featured as well.

Simms felt strongly that women should be encouraged to respect themselves and to use family planning and contraceptives to prevent unwanted pregnancy which could drag them into poverty and dependency.

“There are far too many young girls pregnant, even before they are 16,” she complained in 2016 at a seminar focused on sexual relationships, reproductive health and contraceptive use.

Ailing health influenced her decision to return to Canada to live with relatives in 2019 leaving a huge void behind.

Simms had migrated to Canada in the mid-1960s, completing her education and later doing pioneering work in gender and race relations and as an adviser to the Canadian government, which earned her rich acclaim.

A few days after Simms’s death, her oldest of three children Michelle, spoke feelingly to the Observer by telephone of her mother’s record as “writer, researcher, orator, educator and community activist” and of her total commitment to the “elimination” of racial and other forms of discrimination; and the achievement of social justice for all.

“My mother lived a great life,” said Michelle Simms.