Community gathers to mourn Leonora King, a pillar of Montreal’s Park Ex [Video]

Leonora Indira King’s death on Dec. 21, 2024, was sudden and unexpected. The Parc-Extension community worker had been in and out of the hospital for weeks, yet her positivity was contagious.

“It’ll pass,” she would say about her health issues to Rose Ndjel, the director of the non-profit Afrique au Féminin, for whom King did some work.

“It will be OK tomorrow,” Ndjel said King would say. 

King was 42, ate well, practised kung fu and had too many things to return to anyway.

Earlier in November, her illness forced her to pause activities at her own non-profit, the Parc-Ex Curry Collective, a mutual-aid initiative and catering service that she founded in 2021.

Operating in one of Montreal’s most multicultural neighbourhoods, the collective employs women with precarious immigration statuses. They prepare affordable meals for delivery while building up their financial autonomy in Quebec.

About a dozen women — “the ladies,” …