Honourable senators, Elexis Schloss first encountered anti-Semitism as a child growing up in Medicine Hat, Alberta. In an interview, years later, Elexis recalled how shocked she’d been when a childhood friend told her they couldn’t play together anymore because Elexis had killed Jesus. She said, “It wasn’t me, I don’t even know Jesus! It must have been my brother Lionel, he’s always in trouble. . . .”

She told that story with a giggle, and she brought a similar optimistic energy to her lifetime of work as a champion of human rights, interfaith tolerance and artistic beauty.

Elexis was an interior designer who for almost 20 years worked for Edmonton’s Maclab Development Group before running her own design business. She was a serial entrepreneur who ran a gourmet chocolate truffle business and, later, a company that made designer hand-knit sweaters worn by everyone from Lady Diana, Princess of Wales, to the actress Victoria Principal.

Elexis was a watercolourist, a comic book artist, a gilder, a jewellery maker and a knitter who designed angora sweaters for the wealthy but also knit hundreds of hats, scarves and mittens for the homeless.

She was a member of the boards of more than two dozen Edmonton community organizations, from the Pilgrims Hospice Society and Compassion House Foundation to the Art Gallery of Alberta and the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights. She was an indefatigable event planner who raised money for breast cancer care, cardiac care, animal welfare, HIV prevention and children who’d been sexually abused.

She was the most fashionable, fabulously dressed woman in Edmonton, but she wasn’t just a society grande dame who organized galas.

She and her husband, the physician and philanthropist Eric Schloss, travelled to countries including Rwanda, Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia and Haiti to provide medical care and do hands-on development work. Ever a model for interfaith relations, Elexis worked on rural development projects with evangelical Christian missionaries, raised funds for Catholic Social Services and befriended both Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Jehan Sadat, widow of the former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Elexis even invited Ms. Sadat to come to Edmonton to give the keynote address for the 1993 Jewish National Fund Negev Dinner, which Ms. Sadat did.

Elexis also designed the interior and exterior of Edmonton’s striking Beth Israel Synagogue. Somehow, she still found time to serve as a citizenship judge.

Warm and charming, Elexis Schloss graced the entire Edmonton community with her infectious joy, boundless generosity and moral clarity and energy. Her recent death, at the age of 78, robbed our city of its most elegant and well-dressed champion. But the way she lived her life enriched us all. May her memory be for a blessing for her husband, Eric, their children and grandchildren, and all who knew and loved her.