About Alisa Lyons

Alisa (Paikin) Lyons was a wonderful, beautiful and generous person inside and out who was loved by so many people during her lifetime.

Alisa was born in Dundas, Ontario and grew up on Terrace Drive with her parents Barbara and Rob Paikin and her brother Anthony. After completing high school, Alisa moved to Toronto and obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology at the University of Toronto.

After she graduated, Alisa worked in the entertainment production industry and then for Linkage, an innovative electronic mail company in downtown Toronto, which was ultimately bought by Microsoft at the onset of the dot com era.

In 1994, Alisa married Allan Lyons and they had two incredible daughters together, Jordana and Lindsay. Alisa’s true pride and joy was found in raising her two beautiful daughters, which she dedicated her life to doing in an incredible fashion. Above all else, being the best mom she could be, was Alisa’s focus during her girls’ formative years. Be it a school or synagogue event, dance recital or just an every-day routine occurrence, there was nothing that Alisa wouldn’t do for her daughters.

Alisa was a loving and loyal daughter, wife, mother, sister, aunt and friend. She was undeniably one of the most reliable and sensible people any of us have ever met. Her advice, wisdom and guidance led anyone she knew through life’s ups and downs. She did it all with a beautiful smile on her face and a warmth that exuded constantly from her amazing persona.

During Alisa’s valiant years living with breast cancer, not a day went by that she wasn’t full of positivity and determination, keeping her life unhindered. She would repeatedly assure her family and friends that she was in fact lucky to be alive at a time when so many incredible treatments were available to treat her cancer as a chronic illness. This in fact was the case for a long period of time, as she was able to receive cutting edge treatments as a result of the ongoing cancer research taking place.

Alisa was a true woman of valour who defined selflessness. While living with breast cancer she never wavered and kept on her noble life’s path with her focus to be the ultimate mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend and member of the Jewish community. She had a strong commitment to Israel, Jewish education and ICRF. 

Bringing together Alisa’s passion for Israel and passion for supporting cancer research was the impetus to create The Alisa Lyons ICRF Award of Valour. This research grant for the funding of ground-breaking cancer treatments will change the lives of patients living with cancer with the goal of one day contributing to the cure of the disease.

Alisa passed away after a courageous battle in August of 2016 at the age of 48. She has been missed every day since by all that were fortunate enough to have known and loved her.