In 2003, Rev. Lynn Griffin’s battle with breast cancer became public when she agreed to be featured in a weekly television diary about coping with the debilitating disease. On July 27 Ms. Griffin, who was on disability leave from St. Barnabas, Deep River, Ont., succumbed to cancer.
The television program, called Lynn’s Diary: A battle with cancer, chronicled Ms. Griffin’s fight against the disease. Filmed by her husband, Peter, the diary showed her during various stages of cancer as well as during chemotherapy treatments.
She said she agreed to the project because she wanted “to demystify the cancer experience.” Ms. Griffin appeared on national television “bald, without makeup, and frequently in tears to describe her journey,” said a 2004 article, when she was given an International Women’s Day Award for “courage in the face of adversity.”
Ms. Griffin also wrote the “Healing Tree” column for Crosstalk, the newspaper of the diocese of Ottawa, saying that she wanted “to help others live the lives of joy, peace, love and hope which God wants for us.”