International Centre

Nearly as often as Glen Pearson, MP, is asked to speak at events in and around the Forest City so is his wife, Jane Roy, with their schedules almost never allowing their paths to cross.

Luck was with them on one particularly cold day in February. Pearson and Roy had both been invited to speak at the University of Western Ontario�fortunately for them at different times.

Pearson meet earlier in the day with the Western Liberals, which gave him the opportunity to drop by the Western Student Services Centre to hear Roy speak to a group of faculty and students.

The session, entitled Using Our Resources to Grow International Education was an opportunity for Roy to talk about the couples� NGO Canadian Aid for Southern Sudan.

The timing was optimal as a group of CASS volunteers had returned from Sudan in January as part of its ongoing development there.

Each year CASS travels to Africa usually sometime in January during Pearson�s regularly scheduled break from Parliament.

Roy showed the group slides from years past�they have been travelling to the Sudan for more than 11 years now�including slides of their adopted children, Abuk, 9, who came to Canada as a toddler, and later her twin sister Achen, and brother Ater, 12, who had been believed to have been killed (pictured on the screen).

It wasn�t until a trip back in the mid-2000s that the family became aware that the siblings were alive and well.

After explaining their surprise with the news of Achen and Ater, Roy asked Pearson to address the group with his thoughts.

�Jane�s heart is bigger than anyone I know. There was no question that Achen and Ater would become apart of our family,� said Pearson.