fighting cancer and kidney disease. Before dying, Laws stated: "For many years, the Black Action Defence Committee has been at the forefront of the struggle for the establishment of an Independent Civilian Oversight to investigate police misconduct. Although the government has called many commissions of inquiries, which have recommended the establishment of such a body, the government is reluctant to do so. It is my opinion, and the opinion of others in and outside of our community, that if such a body is established, and citizens of Ontario and Canada have the means by which to make complaints on police abuse, this would greatly improve the relationship between the African-Canadian community and the police." Charles Roach Charles Roach, a veteran social equality legal counsellor and activist whose last cause was his unsuccessful bid to become a Canadian citizen without swearing allegiance to the Queen, which he declared was unlawful. Conceived in Trinidad and Tobago, Roach moved to Toronto and lived there for over 50 years, his name synonymous with the advancement of human rights. He was an associate at Roach and Schwartz Associates, a law office on St. Clair Avenue that, throughout the years, grasped an extensive variety of liberal and left-wing causes. Never more so than during the 1980s, when a string of prominent police shootings in the Toronto area prompted to the provincial Task Force on Policing and Race Relations, which thus created Ontario's civilian-staffed Special Investigations Unit (SIU). The 1978 passing of Buddy Evans was pursued the following year by the executing of Albert Johnson, and both incited wide anger in Toronto's black community. However, it was with the killing of Lester Donaldson in 1988 by a Toronto police officer, and the demise around the same time in Peel Region of a young man Wade Lawson that the pressure for police change accumulated pace. Alongside his activist companion Dudley Laws, whom he would later defend on criminal accusations, Roach's voice was one of the most intense. Charles Roach died at age 79 after a long fight with brain cancer. Sherona Hall Sherona Hall lived to encourage other individuals and battled to make Canada, her adored Caribbean and Africa an increasingly impartial community for all. She died on December 30, 2006, at age 59 while sleeping, but she was not found for three days. She was engaged with the freedom battles in Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Zimbabwe; the battle against