Linda McCurdy celebrates the mother who helped shape her success
October 20, 2026
Eight years after knee surgery prevented Linda McCurdy from attending her celebration among100 Accomplished Black Canadian Women, she joined relatives to honour the woman whose sacrifices had helped shape her success.
Her mother, Patricia Neely-McCurdy, was among the project’s 2026 honourees, bringing two generations of the family into its record of Black Canadian women’s achievements.
“It was a wonderful experience,” said McCurdy, a lawyer and former Canadian high jumper. “Back in 2018, I did not really know what I had missed. It was fairly new at the time. With this year’s event honouring my mother and the fact that we had so many family members present, it was so much more special.”
The occasion offered McCurdy a chance to reflect on her mother’s determination and the profound influence she had on her children.
“This is a question that really cannot be fully answered without writing a novel,” she said. “My mother raised the four of us as a single mother. She went back to school when I was 12 years old and earned her master’s degree.”
Born on October 8, 1933, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Neely-McCurdy grew up in nearby Ypsilanti. Now 93, she recalled a childhood rooted in a close-knit church community, where she served as an usher and sang in an a cappella choir.
Her school years also brought an encounter with racism that remained with her.
In Grade 11, she was the first Black member of her high school’s drum and bugle corps. During a trip to Chicago, a hotel receptionist refused to check her in until the band director threatened to take the entire group elsewhere.
Neely-McCurdy remembered it as her first direct experience of racial discrimination. It was the first time she had been made to feel different because she was Black.
Years later, she returned to school while raising her children, eventually becoming head of the Interior Design Department at St. Clair College during the 1970s.
“I always tell people that my mother was divorced before divorce was in vogue,” McCurdy said.
Patricia Neely-McCurdy (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
As an adult, she has come to understand more fully the effort behind the opportunities she and her siblings received.
“I can’t imagine what our lives would have been without the sacrifices that my mother made,” McCurdy said. “I would not dishonour her by not being successful while still being kind and caring.”
Her mother’s example taught her that achievement carried responsibilities to treat people well, support family and contribute to the wider community.
“We are both strong women who have given to our families and the community in an attempt to ensure a better world for our children,” said McCurdy who was the Liberal party candidate in Windsor West in the 2022 Ontario election.
With her own recognition preceding her mother’s, she offered a playful reversal of a familiar expression.
“Like daughter, like mother,” McCurdy pointed out.
Her accomplishments span international athletics and law.
McCurdy represented Canada in high jump at the 1986 and 1990 Commonwealth Games, earned her law degree at the University of Windsor and was inducted into the Windsor/Essex County Sports Hall of Fame in 2016.
Her father, the late Dr. Howard McCurdy Jr., coached her throughout high school. A scientist, educator and civil rights advocate, he represented Windsor ridings in Parliament from 1984 to 1993, becoming the New Democratic Party’s first Black MP and the second Black person elected to Canada’s House of Commons.
Growing up with accomplished parents provided powerful examples, though McCurdy is candid about the pressure that accompanied them.
“Realistically, it was not easy to have double the expectations thrust upon us,” she said. “But we grew up with a sense of responsibility to our family and our community that we have embraced.”
McCurdy, who has devoted three decades to coaching and mentoring young people and co-owns North Star Cheer with her sisters, helping youth build confidence and pursue excellence, also credits her stepmother with helping nurture that commitment.
“Both of our parents and our stepmother have been involved in our community and have been the authors of our legacy of community involvement and social consciousness,” she said.
That upbringing helps explain McCurdy’s appreciation for the 100 Accomplished Black Canadian Women Project which documents contributions across professions and communities, preserving stories that might otherwise receive little public attention.
“Black women have always been underestimated, underappreciated, undervalued and misunderstood,” she said. “This award gives acknowledgement to Black women who deserve to be recognized because the struggle is still real and they have achieved amazing things despite the struggle.”
Her mother’s inclusion made that recognition especially meaningful.
The determination McCurdy had witnessed at home was now part of a public record, with relatives present to celebrate the woman behind it.
Linda McCurdy (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
She had missed the ceremony honouring her own achievements. This time, she was there to applaud the mother who had helped make them possible.
