Tasha Sophia Diamant

TASHA SOPHIA DIAMANT

SEPTEMBER 29, 1961 - NOVEMBER 17, 2025

Tasha Sophia Diamant, aged 64, passed away peacefully on November 17, 2025, at Victoria General Hospital, surrounded by family and close friends. After living with stage IV ovarian cancer for ten years and three months, Tasha chose to access Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), leaving this world on her own terms, with clarity and dignity.

Tasha was born on September 29, 1961, in Calgary, Alberta, to Mildred and George Diamant. She grew up in the restaurant industry after her parents opened Tasha’s On The Mall in 1965, where she worked for many years. Some of her fondest memories were shaped in the service industry - both there as a teenager and later at Le Select Bistro in Toronto, Ontario, throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

She earned a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from Queen’s University and a Master of Education from University of Lethbridge in 2011, where she defended a thesis in arts-based research centered on The Human Body Project and its accompanying feature-length documentary. From 2004 to 2016, she taught across disciplines including media production, public speaking, writing, communication, cultural studies, and research at Lethbridge College, the University of Lethbridge, and Royal Roads University. She received a Teaching Excellence Award in 2010 and the Graduate Award from the Canadian Association for the Study of Women in Education in 2012.

As a writer, artist, teacher, and activist for more than 35 years, Tasha contributed to various publications including Maclean’s, where she worked as a journalist from 1988 through the mid-1990s, and Australia’s Who Weekly. In 1989, during her time at Maclean’s, she pressed for the mass murder of fourteen women at École Polytechnique to be placed on the front cover, refusing to accept it as an isolated act. The moment forced a lasting confrontation with violence against women and her own understanding of feminism, ultimately reshaping how she understood power, silence, and responsibility in the world around her. She later served as a creative director for an advertising agency in Lethbridge, Alberta, and worked extensively in communications in both Alberta and Victoria, B.C., where she moved in 2011.

A dedicated ecofeminist performance artist and activist, Tasha received the Southern Alberta Art Gallery Award in 2006 and spent several summers painting on location in Saint Andrews-by-the-Sea, Deer Island, and Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick. She spent one summer painting in Louisiana, where she rescued a puppy from being eaten by alligators—she named him Swampy, and always said he was her first child.

Tasha was the creator of The Human Body Project, a performance art series that explored vulnerability, trauma, and embodiment through unscripted public and theatrical appearances. This work, along with Body and Stumps and Humans of Fairy Creek were presented through various activism works, performances, workshops, and public vulnerability vigils in Victoria and Vancouver, B.C., Toronto, O.N., New York, N.Y., and Montreal, Q.C. She performed Human Body Project performances and related work at many Fringe festivals between 2009 - 2023 including winning the Creativity Award at the Montreal Fringe in 2018.

From 1990 until the 2000s, Tasha was primarily focused on her visual art practice and has paintings in hundreds of collections. She trained as a yoga instructor at the Kripalu Centre for Yoga and Health, taught yoga to school-aged children, and co-facilitated drama and creativity workshops at the William Head Institution through William Head on Stage. As an experiential workshop leader, she was deeply committed to community engagement, volunteering in local schools, helping co-create Freeskool Victoria, serving on the board of the Community Art Hub (Alter Arts), and contributing murals across Victoria, B.C. including a Todd Parr-inspired piece in Lake Hill Elementary School, Under-sea-ish (2020) at 851 Cormorant St., and Midsummer Nightmare (2021) at 2657 Quadra St.

Living with advanced cancer, Tasha felt an urgent responsibility to live her values openly. She devoted herself not only to environmental justice, Indigenous land defense, and global human rights, but to motherhood, arts-based education, feminism, community care, mentorship, and the use of art and the body as instruments of truth and healing. At the Fairy Creek blockade, she returned again and again in support of old-growth forest protection despite her declining health. In 2021, she chained herself to the Captain Cook statue in downtown Victoria in solidarity with those arrested at Fairy Creek, carrying a “Chainsaw Massacre” sign and speaking publicly about forest destruction, government policy, and RCMP actions. From 2021 to 2022, she helped organize weekly peaceful protests at the B.C. Legislature for forest protection and police accountability. She later initiated the painting of one rock for each arrestee as a quiet act of witness and solidarity.

Above all else, Tasha was a devoted mother. Her daughters, Claire and Sophia, were the centre of her life and the reason behind her work, her activism, and her teaching. As she often said, she chose her values over her programming - values rooted first and always in her love for her daughters. At its core, The Human Body Project, was mother work. Motherhood transformed everything she understood about safety as she could no longer compartmentalize the threats facing her children - and all children; climate collapse, rising authoritarianism, and everyday life became inseparable.

Tasha was known for her sharp honesty, wit, and deep compassion. She questioned systems others avoided, made space for discomfort, and helped others feel accepted in their full humanity. She remained steady in difficult conversations, generous with her care, and truly unwavering in her commitment to truth and ethical responsibility.

She is survived by her daughters Claire and Sophia; their fathers Robert and Dave; parents Mildred and George Diamant; brothers Chris and Socrates Diamant; aunts Cheach and Marie; beloved cat Merlin; “silly” dog Layla; Tree Friend, and many extended family members, students, friends, and community members.

Details regarding a celebration of life will be shared at a later date.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to https://chuffed.org/project/159979-for-those-causes-tasha-cared-for

in support of the causes that mattered most to Tasha. Donations to assist Claire and Sophia with completing their education may be made at https://chuffed.org/project/159967-for-tashas-girls

To honour Tasha’s memory, the family invites people to live with honesty, courage, and care for one another and for the land - values she practiced every day of her life.