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It was recently brought to my attention that Sanja Vukosavljevic passed away last March at the very young age of 33.
I did not personally know Sanja so I am sure that there are far more knowledgeable people to talk about her extraordinary life. However, I was among her lucky successors on the Hart House Chess Club's Executive Board and I would like to share some words of praise and memory about her, in part because of my admiration of her amazing contributions to the Club and in part because it pains me to realize that the only reference to Sanja's great work for UofT chess was a short tweet by GM Nigel Short rather than a story told by one of her beloved community.
When Sanja became the HHCC Secretary, the club was going through its darkest ages. Officially unpopular among UofT students, especially women (with a mere 30 members on its list, 3 of whom women), fairly inactive in terms of its events (with the bright exception of Alex Ferreira's priceless and continuous chess gifts to the GTA community), virtually invisible in the world wide web, and, may I add, somewhat forgotten by Hart House itself, as reflected in the modest funding, the lack of sufficient mentions on Hart House's media and the absence of an exclusive university space for weekly chess meetings.
Then, in 2013, along came Sanja to become the first-ever female Chess Club Secretary in over 100 years of club history. Supported by a capable and passionate, female-majority executive board, Sanja and her colleagues took the club by the hand and restored it to its past glory. The number of paid members skyrocketed to 77, 16 of which were women. The Hart House Reading Room became the chess club's exclusive meeting point throughout the school year and the club's calendar of events was filled with exciting and vivid social and chess events.
Truly committed to fostering a vibrant and inclusive chess community Sanja introduced the annual - nowadays super popular - Welcome Pizza Party and she came up with the Christmas Cake Party and the End of Year Party. She also initiated the Chess Movie Nights, intended to bring the club members together and create friendly bonds ("Luzhin's Defense" was among the movies streamed on those evenings). The chess events were also offered in abundance and included Master Lectures (with Lawrence Day and Raja Panjwani), a Pep Talk by UofT Professor and IM Zvonko Vranesic, as well as a Simul Exhibition with WGM Melissa Greef. Besides the Holidays Open, the Reading Week Open and the HHCC Championship, several casual chess competitions (bughouse, blitz, rapid) were successfully organized during Sanja's term (with custom medals), creating a loop effect where more and more new members joined the club for its events and more and more club events were hosted to serve the growing membership. I believe that Sanja's greatest passion was promoting female chess, as well as chess among newbies; the beginner chess workshops by Adie Todd were introduced precisely to welcome chess rookies to the royal game. Sanja, herself, was famous for showing up at the club early every Friday, to talk to people at the door, meet them personally and make them feel welcome, regardless of their chess strength.
With the indispensable assistance and creativity of her fellow exec, Sophia Park, Sanja made sure that the Hart House Chess Club would finally get its own website and social media, which she kept actively fed with content, such as humorous event invitations and beautiful event posters and photos (dozens of Facebook posts and club photos travelled around the student community those days). The list of members became a useful tool for weekly communication and a stylish "welcome to HHCC" sign became a permanent decoration of the club's weekly meetings. I believe (without positively knowing it) that the Hart House Chess Club logo, the club t-shirts and the flyers were also Sanja's ideas and doing.
And what a sense of club pride all these little things brought to the community! Students and alumni who were either estranged from the club or simply not involved in its activities were infected by Sanja's passion and they came together, often proudly wearing their HHCC swag, to support the executive's dream for the club. The history section of the HHCC website, for example, to whose content Sanja contributed, was prepared by devoted volunteers, who must have been inspired by the general effort and hard work they witnessed happening to achieve the club's renaissance.
These feats did not go unnoticed by Hart House (the mother institution) either, whose chess club supervisor, the incredible Day Millman, singled out Sanja and her colleagues and fully supported her vision. For the first time, the chess club events got frequently mentioned on the Hart House website and calendars, the HH tumblr ran stories about the chess club's accomplishments and the club received an invitation to participate in University of Toronto's orientation events. Restless as she was, Sanja looked for ways to give the chess club even more exposure including interviews and stories in Toronto media as well as seeking opportunities to connect the club to the 5$ Hart House Lunch events.
Of course this is not an objective or full account of Sanja's involvement with UofT's official chess club. I understand that some of Sanja's (later) decisions were controversial and may have blurred her legacy. But considering things in perspective and in the light of her sudden loss, I will say that I have only ever known a handful of people who can claim to have achieved and contributed to the Hart House Chess Club nearly as much as what Sanja did. Sanja was a doer - not just a woman of ideas or an idle critic of those who get things done. As a doer, she was doomed to make mistakes. But this does not mean that the community should be any less grateful or forget her contribution.
I knew Sanja Vukasavljevic only from the record of her amazing work and the glorious things she and her team accomplished. After she left the club, the membership numbers and the overall club activity gradually went down again, until a different executive, of which I was a proud member, would carefully study what Sanja did and would follow her footsteps. Time will tell how well we served this amazing club and its members but, to paraphrase Isaac Newton, if we have seen further in our own efforts to develop the club it is by standing on the shoulders of a giant.
- Sanja's Obituary can be accessed here (https://necrocanada.com/obituaries-2...-24-mars-2022/)
I did not personally know Sanja so I am sure that there are far more knowledgeable people to talk about her extraordinary life. However, I was among her lucky successors on the Hart House Chess Club's Executive Board and I would like to share some words of praise and memory about her, in part because of my admiration of her amazing contributions to the Club and in part because it pains me to realize that the only reference to Sanja's great work for UofT chess was a short tweet by GM Nigel Short rather than a story told by one of her beloved community.
When Sanja became the HHCC Secretary, the club was going through its darkest ages. Officially unpopular among UofT students, especially women (with a mere 30 members on its list, 3 of whom women), fairly inactive in terms of its events (with the bright exception of Alex Ferreira's priceless and continuous chess gifts to the GTA community), virtually invisible in the world wide web, and, may I add, somewhat forgotten by Hart House itself, as reflected in the modest funding, the lack of sufficient mentions on Hart House's media and the absence of an exclusive university space for weekly chess meetings.
Then, in 2013, along came Sanja to become the first-ever female Chess Club Secretary in over 100 years of club history. Supported by a capable and passionate, female-majority executive board, Sanja and her colleagues took the club by the hand and restored it to its past glory. The number of paid members skyrocketed to 77, 16 of which were women. The Hart House Reading Room became the chess club's exclusive meeting point throughout the school year and the club's calendar of events was filled with exciting and vivid social and chess events.
Truly committed to fostering a vibrant and inclusive chess community Sanja introduced the annual - nowadays super popular - Welcome Pizza Party and she came up with the Christmas Cake Party and the End of Year Party. She also initiated the Chess Movie Nights, intended to bring the club members together and create friendly bonds ("Luzhin's Defense" was among the movies streamed on those evenings). The chess events were also offered in abundance and included Master Lectures (with Lawrence Day and Raja Panjwani), a Pep Talk by UofT Professor and IM Zvonko Vranesic, as well as a Simul Exhibition with WGM Melissa Greef. Besides the Holidays Open, the Reading Week Open and the HHCC Championship, several casual chess competitions (bughouse, blitz, rapid) were successfully organized during Sanja's term (with custom medals), creating a loop effect where more and more new members joined the club for its events and more and more club events were hosted to serve the growing membership. I believe that Sanja's greatest passion was promoting female chess, as well as chess among newbies; the beginner chess workshops by Adie Todd were introduced precisely to welcome chess rookies to the royal game. Sanja, herself, was famous for showing up at the club early every Friday, to talk to people at the door, meet them personally and make them feel welcome, regardless of their chess strength.
With the indispensable assistance and creativity of her fellow exec, Sophia Park, Sanja made sure that the Hart House Chess Club would finally get its own website and social media, which she kept actively fed with content, such as humorous event invitations and beautiful event posters and photos (dozens of Facebook posts and club photos travelled around the student community those days). The list of members became a useful tool for weekly communication and a stylish "welcome to HHCC" sign became a permanent decoration of the club's weekly meetings. I believe (without positively knowing it) that the Hart House Chess Club logo, the club t-shirts and the flyers were also Sanja's ideas and doing.
And what a sense of club pride all these little things brought to the community! Students and alumni who were either estranged from the club or simply not involved in its activities were infected by Sanja's passion and they came together, often proudly wearing their HHCC swag, to support the executive's dream for the club. The history section of the HHCC website, for example, to whose content Sanja contributed, was prepared by devoted volunteers, who must have been inspired by the general effort and hard work they witnessed happening to achieve the club's renaissance.
These feats did not go unnoticed by Hart House (the mother institution) either, whose chess club supervisor, the incredible Day Millman, singled out Sanja and her colleagues and fully supported her vision. For the first time, the chess club events got frequently mentioned on the Hart House website and calendars, the HH tumblr ran stories about the chess club's accomplishments and the club received an invitation to participate in University of Toronto's orientation events. Restless as she was, Sanja looked for ways to give the chess club even more exposure including interviews and stories in Toronto media as well as seeking opportunities to connect the club to the 5$ Hart House Lunch events.
Of course this is not an objective or full account of Sanja's involvement with UofT's official chess club. I understand that some of Sanja's (later) decisions were controversial and may have blurred her legacy. But considering things in perspective and in the light of her sudden loss, I will say that I have only ever known a handful of people who can claim to have achieved and contributed to the Hart House Chess Club nearly as much as what Sanja did. Sanja was a doer - not just a woman of ideas or an idle critic of those who get things done. As a doer, she was doomed to make mistakes. But this does not mean that the community should be any less grateful or forget her contribution.
I knew Sanja Vukasavljevic only from the record of her amazing work and the glorious things she and her team accomplished. After she left the club, the membership numbers and the overall club activity gradually went down again, until a different executive, of which I was a proud member, would carefully study what Sanja did and would follow her footsteps. Time will tell how well we served this amazing club and its members but, to paraphrase Isaac Newton, if we have seen further in our own efforts to develop the club it is by standing on the shoulders of a giant.
- Sanja's Obituary can be accessed here (https://necrocanada.com/obituaries-2...-24-mars-2022/)
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