Marie Warder

Marie Warder (born Marie van Zyl) is a journalist, novelist and activist best known for her activities raising awareness about hemochromatosis. Warder founded the Hemochromatosis Society of South Africa (HSSA), and the Canadian Hemochromatosis Society (CHS), and was founder and long-time President of the International Association of Hemochromatosis Societies (IAHS).

Biography
Warder was born Marie van Zyl, in Ficksburg, South Africa in 1927. She married bandleader Frederick Abinger (Tom) Warder and moved with him to Canada. Tom Warder was diagnosed with hemochromatosis in 1975, at the Johannesburg General Hospital and her daughter was diagnosed in Victoria, Canada, with the same disease in 1979. These two events spurred Warder to become an activist, raising awareness of the disease within the medical community and the general public.

Journalism career
In February 1939, at age 11, Warder began writing stories for local newspapers, selling her first story to the Cape Argus. The story behind the impulse to submit the Argus story is told in BC Bookworld. In 1944, by the time she was seventeen, she had had two stories published in the British magazine Everybody's and later wrote for several South African periodicals.

By 17, she was also the chief reporter for the Germiston Advocate. Judy Lloyd, writing in The Ficksburg News, and quoting The Journalist (a newsletter for journalists), claims that in this role, Warder was the youngest chief reporter in the world. During her career as a journalist Warder had the chance to interview, among others, Pat Boone, Field Marshal Jan Christiaan Smuts and Frances Steloff, founder of New York’s Gotham Book Mart in 1920.

Warder's journalism career is most noted for her numerous pamphlets and articles on the subject of hemochromatosis.

Writing career
While still living in South Africa, Warder took to writing fiction. She is the author of twenty-four novels written in English and Afrikaans;  three of which were used for some years as required reading in South African schools. Many of her stories take place in and around newspaper offices.

Warder was listed among South Africa’s top seven “favorite novelists” by Dagbreek-Boekkring, a South African book publisher. Mary Morrison Webster, book critic of the Johannesburg Sunday Times, recorded among her recommendations printed in the 1959 pre-Christmas edition of the paper, two books written “in time for Christmas—in two different languages.” Mrs. Warder’s biography is included in the Archives of the National Council of Women among “Notable Women of Johannesburg.”

Late in 2003, after years of activism (see below), Warder returned to novel writing. Storm Water and With no remorse… were released simultaneously less than a year later. In late 2010, Warder was working on her 23rd book: an updated version of Penny of the Morning Star, a novel she had originally written in South Africa in the 1960s as a part of a training course in English as a second language. Her latest book, April in Portugal, was released late in May 2011.

Hemochromatosis activism
In 1975, Warder's husband, Frederick Abinger (Tom) Warder, who had been seriously ill for eight years, was finally diagnosed with hemochromatosis at the age of 50, and died later in 1992. In 1979 their daughter, then 32, was also diagnosed with hemochromatosis, Warder concluded that the disorder was hereditary and that much of what she had been told about it was incorrect: women could indeed develop hemochromatosis, and it was not only a disease of middle-age. Warder made it her mission to make the world aware of this disease, including an interview with Ida Clarkson on CHEK television. For more than 28 years after that, except for a series of travel articles, Warder devoted her literary efforts to works about hemochromatosis. During this time she wrote The Bronze Killer, the first devoted entirely to the subject of the genetic disorder hemochromatosis. The term "Bronze Killer" has been used, among others, in the Toronto Star, in British newspapers, in the magazine supplement of the Johannesburg Sunday Express and in a Quebec French issue of the Reader's Digest, where it is called “La tueuse au masque du bronze”. Hemochromatosis was referred to as "the bronze killer" in an editorial by Clement Finch, Professor of Medicine Emeritus of the University of Washington, in the Western Journal of Medicine, September 1990.

In that same editorial, Finch says: “A strong case can be made for incorporating measurements of the plasma iron, iron-binding capacity and ferritin into the routine blood screen. Without such a survey, there is little hope of recognizing hemochromatosis at a time when treatment has the greatest promise.” He also notes: “Lay Societies have been formed whose mission is to disseminate information about the “bronze killer”. . . Their information program is so effective that the people they reach are sometimes far better informed than their physicians.” The Bronze Killer is recommended by professionals around the world.

Warder went on to found hemochromatosis societies in her native South Africa and her adopted home of Canada.

Warder has also published more than 300 articles on the subject of hemochromatosis, and as well as patient literature for individuals, hospitals and other medical facilities. Her newsletters and brochures have gone out to more than 16 countries.

Other activities
In addition to her activities as a writer and activist, Warder has been an educator, founding and serving as the first principal of Windsor House Academy, a "dual-medium" school in Kempton Park, South Africa; a musician, playing keyboards with her husband's band; and, late in life, a lay chaplain at the Delta Hospital in Ladner, British Columbia. Maluti (talk) Maluti (talk) Maluti (talk)

Fiction

 * English
 * Afrikaans
 * Afrikaans
 * Afrikaans
 * Afrikaans
 * Afrikaans
 * Afrikaans
 * Afrikaans
 * Afrikaans
 * Afrikaans

Nonfiction

 * (Updated in 2000 as The Bronze Killer: New Edition (Dromedaris Books, ISBN 9780968735800) including "Iron: The Other Side of the Story", a layman's guide to hemochromatosis)

Recognition
For her efforts in founding the CHS, Warder was presented with a certificate of appreciation on April 11, 1988, by Mayor G.J. Blair, of Richmond, British Columbia "in recognition of her contribution to voluntary service" in that city, one year after he had been the first Mayor in Canada to proclaim an annual week of awareness for Hemochromatosis. During that first Awareness Week, 523 new cases of hemochromatosis were diagnosed. In 2011, she was presented with a lifetime achievement award by the Canadian Hemochromatosis Society. Some years ago, the Minister of Health for Canada declared May each year to be a month of National Awareness for the disorder and it is now also observed by organizations in other countries for instance the United States.

Warder was awarded the Canada Volunteer Award in 1991, it was given by the Health and Welfare Canada (a former Canadian federal department) for her work and advocacy of raising awareness of hemochromatosis.