Audrey ‘Bobbie’ Cobden

Throughout her life, first in apartheid-era South Africa and then in Canada, my stepmother Audrey "Bobbie" Cobden, who has died aged 92, fought against racism. She was also a great defender of the weak, the poor and the elderly.

Bobbie was born and grew up in Johannesburg. Her father, Sydney Dodson, who managed the piano department of a furniture business in the city, and her mother, Olive (nee Hiles), divorced when Bobbie was in her teens.