Friends and former colleagues who gathered in Bible Hill, N.S. Friday morning remembered slain French teacher Jocelyne Couture-Nowak as a passionate, peace-loving woman.
Couture-Nowak was one of 32 people killed on Monday in the Virginia Tech massacre.
About 400 friends, relatives and former colleagues gathered at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College to celebrate her life.
Couture-Nowak and her husband Jerzy lived and worked in the Bible Hill area, near Truro, for several years, both teaching at the agricultural college.
Couture-Nowak also taught at the nearby Ecole Acadienne de Truro, which she helped found, The Canadian Press reports.
"Much has been written and said about Jocelyne's life in recent days, but I would like to share some personal recollections about my sister. As my older sister, she was my inspiration. By example, she strived to achieve the best no matter what the challenge," said her sister Lilianne Couture.
Before the memorial began, about 60 students from Ecole Acadienne de Truro, all of them wearing red, white or blue scarves - the colours of the Acadian flag, filed into the hall and sang two songs in her honour.
Inside the hall, mourners were greeted by a large portrait of a smiling Couture-Nowak.
Though he never met her, Philip Hicks, president of the college, said it was important to celebrate Couture-Nowak's life.
"The campus needs to come together to remember this wonderful woman who contributed so much to this society," Hicks said before the ceremony.
"All the people that I know on campus speak so passionately and fondly and warmly about the Nowaks, that I feel pained in my heart for them."
There are reports that Couture-Nowak's classroom was the last one shooter Cho Seung-Hui entered on Monday -- firing off rounds and claiming lives before turning his gun on himself in front of the students who were still alive.
The couple moved to Virginia in 2001, but has left a lasting impression in the Bible Hill community.
"A lot of people kept asking if we were going to do something to honour her,'' said Alisha Hannam, a spokesperson for the agricultural college.
"We got together with Ecole Acadienne and friends, and came up with this idea.''
The 49-year-old had two children: Sylvie, 12, and Francine Dulong, 24, a theatre student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Her four younger siblings were born in Quebec but lived in Yarmouth, N.S., for a few years when they were in elementary school.
A hero's funeral
Earlier Friday, a professor who has emerged as one of the tragic heroes of the shooting massacre was buried in Israel in a traditional Jewish funeral.
Liviu Librescu, a 76-year-old aeronautics engineer and lecturer at the school, survived the Holocaust only to be gunned down as he attempted to save his students from the gunman.
Librescu, who died while trying to barricade the door of his classroom and protect his students, was one of 32 people killed Monday by Cho, who also took his own life.
At Librescu's funeral his grieving family sobbed and his two sons intoned the Kaddish, the Hebrew prayer for the dead, The Associated Press reports.
"It's so painful for me to think of your last moments, in which you suffered. I'll never know what went through your mind, but I hope very much that wherever you are, you will watch over your family,'' Librescu's weeping wife, Marlena, said.
Librescu was awarded posthumously Romania's highest medal for his scientific achievements and heroism, by Georgi Angelescu, a representative of the Romanian government.
"I walked through the streets today with my head held high because I have such a father,'' said his elder son, Joe.
The family said numerous students had sent them emails explaining how Librescu died buying time for his students to flee.
"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee,'' Joe Librescu told The Associated Press after the massacre. "Students started opening windows and jumping out.''
Librescu was a child in Nazi-allied Romania during the Second World War, and was deported with his family to Transnistria, and then to a ghetto in Focsani, his son said. About 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were killed by the Romanian regime during the war.
The family moved to Israel in 1978, but left in 1985 for Virginia, where Librescu took a position teaching mathematics and engineering at the university
With files from The Associated Press and The Canadian Press
