Obituary of Dr. Karen Pearlston
Karen Frimet Pearlston, born 15 November 1958, daughter of Maryline and Harvey, died peacefully at her home in Ekpahak / Fredericton, NB, on 18 September 2026 at the age of 67.
Karen is survived by her beloved partner of 36 years Joan Lillian Headley, her sister Enna, brother Phillip, niece Esther, nephew Avram, granddaughters Kamilah and Amaani. She is predeceased by her parents and her sister Reva. Karen was a proud anti-zionist Jewish lesbian, a lifelong activist, a brilliant legal scholar and teacher, and a deeply loved partner, friend, colleague, mentor and community member. She was an integral part of queer, feminist and social justice movements, and brought to everything she did a fierce and unwavering commitment to justice and equality. Her loss will be deeply felt by all who knew her.
Karen’s pathway through education was anything but conventional. She attended the Multi-Age Grouping Unit (MAGU), an alternative high school in Toronto, and later went on to earn her law degree from Osgoode Hall Law School, where she finished first in her final year. She subsequently earned an LL.M. from the University of British Columbia and a PhD in law from Osgoode. Along the way, she articled at one of Canada’s leading labour law firms in Toronto.
Karen was a lifelong activist. Over the years, she participated in organizations and movements working for social justice, including Women Against Violence Against Women, AIDS Action Now!, prison abolition, anti-racism, reproductive justice, gender equality, queer rights, anti- capitalism and Palestinian liberation.
Karen joined the Faculty of Law at the University of New Brunswick in 2001 and remained there until her retirement. Her scholarship focused on legal history, family law, torts, and gender, sexuality and law. Her life as a scholar was never separate from her commitments as an activist, teacher and member of her communities. She was a pioneer in bringing the study of gender, sexuality and law into the curriculum at UNB Law and was a founding member of Centre 203.
Her scholarship interrogated the law of coverture and examined the historical and contemporary treatment of lesbians and other sexual minorities in family law. She also analyzed some of the mythology surrounding the 1969 federal omnibus legislation and its impact on same-sex relationships. Together with colleagues, she undertook important work examining barriers to reproductive justice in New Brunswick.
Karen loved the law. This was perhaps her most complicated love, because, let’s be honest, the law was also something she hated most fiercely. She loved the intricacy of doctrinal analysis and was extraordinarily good at it. She loved the way legal history seemed to possess an unfailing improv-theatre quality of “and also.” The law of coverture oppressed women—and also demonstrated the never-ending creativity of women and law in creating exceptions and manoeuvring around coverture, sometimes for empowering reasons and sometimes for oppressive ones. And also, patriarchy will always be back. And also, we will always be back, struggling against patriarchy. Law reform decriminalizing homosexuality was a big deal—and also did surprising things, not all of them good. Reproductive justice needed law—and also, law thought itself so much more important than it really was. Karen had an extraordinary ability to hold these contradictions together. She could love the complexity of law while remaining deeply suspicious of its claims to authority. She understood that legal change mattered enormously, while also understanding that law alone could never deliver justice.
From graduate student days and throughout her career, Karen is remembered as unfailingly constructive and reflective, critical of ideas but never of people. She was exceptionally clear in her explanations, humane in her judgments, and deeply committed to justice for women and for everyone.
Karen loved her students, and many of them loved her back. Even the ones who did not occasionally gave her gifts of laughter. Karen was very proud that one disgruntled student wrote in an evaluation that “Prof. Pearlston is worse than feminist.” For years, we had vague plans to turn that into a T-shirt. Karen modelled what it meant to be a great learner. She was always thinking about better ways to speak, to act, to advocate and to understand. She taught her teachers and learned from her students. Karen always had ten good projects on the go. She challenged students to think about the law differently and encouraged them to examine not only what a law said, but its practical consequences and the social injustices it might reproduce.
She was also a remarkable colleague. Karen responded to the everyday misogyny of academia by showing up. She was the best peer reviewer many of us had ever encountered. She supported colleagues going through reviews, safeguarded new arrivals and mentored people by the bucket- load. She made space for people who were different from her. She invested precious time and energy in campus initiatives intended to improve the experiences of queer students and of students and colleagues with disabilities. She contributed to the faculty association and pushed her union to become better at representing colleagues. She was, at various times, both the biggest pain in the ass and the sagest advisor to successive deans and senior administrators.
To mark her retirement from UNB Law, colleagues organized a colloquium on “Gender, (In)equalities, and the State,” honouring her research in gender, sexuality and law, legal history and family law, as well as her activist work in reproductive justice and queer organizing. The gathering reflected the breadth of the communities she had helped build and the influence of her scholarship and activism.
Karen’s activism stretched across decades. From the occupation of the Israeli consulate protesting the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, to APEC in 1997 and Axe 84-20, Karen showed up. She brought her considerable intellect, a lifetime of experience in how to get stuff done, laughter, many eye rolls, a sense of urgency and a remarkable capacity for patience. She held passion and compassion in a fine balance.
Karen created community around her, and she lived in community. She cared about people both collectively and individually. She inspired, led and supported causes that served the collective good, while never losing sight of the people who made up those communities.
She was also deeply committed to the generations that followed her. In her later years, she spent much of her time building relationships with people considerably younger than herself. She often marvelled at how wonderful it was to see “these young people” in her community who were proudly and openly queer, politically active and socially involved. She was delighted by them, learned from them and supported them.
Karen had a superpower: she made the people in her life feel that they were very special to her. She wore her love for Joan, for her family and for her friends on her sleeve. Her love could be tender and caring; it could be challenging and fierce; and on some days, it could even be a little stern. But it was always clear that you were her people, you mattered enormously to her, and that her life was better for having you in it. Karen and Joan shared a life filled with love, joy, friendship and community. Karen was a fiercely dedicated partner, and her love for Joan was at the centre of her life.
She had a remarkable capacity for friendships that lasted decades. She remained connected to high-school friends, colleagues, students, activists and fellow travellers she encountered long ago and more recently. She collected people, stories, books and causes, and she kept returning to them. Her friendships often extended beyond individuals to encompass their families. One friend remembered with particular affection how Karen’s family became their family too. Karen was generous not simply with her belongings but with herself. She was also gloriously capable of saying no, loudly and clearly. Karen loved to read and exchange book recommendations. Not everyone shared her love of science fiction, but many enjoyed conversations about her latest read. Karen taught her friends about family law, lesbian legal history, feminist theory, Jewish culture and great food, not necessarily in that order. She was a chosen auntie to children she loved and was loved by in return.
Karen’s life brought together things that are too often separated: scholarship and activism, intellect and emotion, critique and care, seriousness and humour. She could be fierce without losing tenderness, principled without losing curiosity, and impatient for change while understanding that meaningful change often takes time. She was a lifelong scholar, feminist and activist. She was also a lifelong student, always open to the possibility that someone else might have something to teach her. Her intellectual curiosity was matched by a wonderful sense of humour. She was a lively conversationalist, an avid reader of science fiction, and a collector of vintage zines and anarchist literature. She loved ideas, arguments, books, food and people. She loved conversation that could go on far longer than anyone had intended.
There is a sense of an unfinished future that runs through the memories of those who loved Karen. There were more books to read, more arguments to have, more projects to start, more causes to support, more trouble to get into. “We were going to be a menace together,” one friend recalled. “I will miss her every day.”
Things will never be the same. But Karen’s work continues in the people she taught, mentored, challenged and encouraged; in the scholarship she left behind; in the communities she helped build; and in the movements to which she devoted herself. We will go on struggling for the things Karen believed in. We will continue to make communities, to challenge injustice, to argue with the law, to support one another and to make trouble when trouble needs making.
Karen Pearlston was deeply loved. She will be profoundly missed.
May her memory be for a blessing and a revolution.
Donations in Karen’s name may be made to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund or the Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre.