With the death of journalist Brian Vallée, 70, Canada has lost a passionate advocate in the struggle to end violence against women.

Vallée became engaged in the cause for ending domestic violence and woman abuse after producing a piece for the fifth estate on Jane Hurshman, the first woman in Canada to successfully use a battered-wife defence in the murder of her abusive common-law husband, Billy Stafford.

Vallée, who also reported for the Windsor Star, the Toronto Sun, and the Toronto Star and was starting his own digital publishing company, West End Books, went on to write six books including a best-selling book on Hurshman, Life With Billy (Seal Books, 1986), and his most recent, The War on Women (Key Porter, 2007), an investigation into the murder of women in Canada by their intimate partners.

From The Globe and Mail:

[Hurshman’s] story had such an impact on Vallée that his crusade for battered women, both in the judicial system and in the media, continued throughout his life. After … The War On Women was published in 2007, he found himself in demand as a national keynote speaker. Even when the pain of illness debilitated him, he insisted on fulfilling the obligation of prior bookings. Right up to the time of his death from cancer on July 22 at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital, Vallée was making plans to expand his electronic publishing company, West End Books [which will continue in his absence]. He was optimistic throughout his medical ordeal, planning to write his autobiography, and a book he believed would solve the mystery of who killed Sir Harry Oakes in the Bahamas in 1943. Finally, he had to admit to his friend and fellow writer Ron Base, I’m cooked.

A memorial will be held for Vallée this evening from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Glenn Gould Studio lobby at the CBC broadcast centre in Toronto.