Éva was born in Pécs, a city she has remained loyal to throughout her life. She graduated from Nagy Lajos Gimnázium before emigrating with her family to Canada in 1974. She received her BA from the University of Toronto, her MBA from York University, and her PhD in Business Administration from the University of Pécs in 2015. Her dissertation, entitled Bootstrap Financing: Case Studies of Ten Technology-Based Innovative Ventures, Tales from the Best, allowed her to graduate Summa cum Laude.
Éva has been a member of the Hungarian Studies Association of Canada since its inception in 1985. She served from 1991 to 2010 as Associate Secretary in the Secretariat of the HSAC at the University of Toronto. She also helped in many unofficial ways, for example, on the Executive of the HSAC or as Chair of the Nominating Committee over several terms. Few people contributed more to Hungarian Studies with more grace, dedication, and love than did Éva. But even more important than this generous record of service, Éva Tömöry has been a long-standing teacher of the Hungarian language at the University of Toronto. She taught Hungarian at the Hungarian Chair of the U of T from 1984 until 2001. After the Chair was reorganized, since 2009, she taught introductory, intermediate and advanced Hungarian language courses at the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies of the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. An outstanding pedagogue, beloved of her students, she has taught generations of those wishing to learn Hungarian in Toronto. She also encouraged her students to present papers at our conferences, plus, she herself helped organize at least one student conference in Hungarian Studies at the Munk Centre, in 2015. She presented scholarly papers about language pedagogy as well as on subjects related to her field, entrepreneurship, and business administration, at the HSAC Conferences as well as at academic conferences abroad: in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, the United States, and Hungary. She has, of course, published in the Hungarian Studies Review.
Her service to Hungarian studies extended to being local conference organizer the many times that the HSAC met in Toronto, and doing the thousand-and-one tasks necessary for ensuring that these complex events come to fruition. She was also a long-time supporter of the Rakoczi Foundation in Toronto, including serving as Director. And she did all this while running her household, acting as a business partner with her husband Nicholas (“Miki”) Tomory in their high-tech enterprises, raising two children, and looking after Miki who eventually succumbed to cancer. It is a cruel fate that an unexpected heart attack suddenly took her from us much too early.
It is difficult to imagine what Hungarian Studies and the teaching of the Hungarian language will look like in this country without Éva Tömöry’s contributions that lasted over four decades. Her loving kindness, generosity, and friendly presence will be sorely missed by us all.
Living on is a privilege, but to live on is also to live with the pain of loss. Nyugodjál békében, kedves Éva!