Claire Crooks ’95 Taught Teens About Healthy Relationships

When Claire Crooks ’95 wasn’t brightening the world for family and friends, she was working to make it a better place for others. And one way she did that was by co-creating The Fourth R, a curriculum educating teens about healthy relationships that is now used in more than 5,000 schools across Canada and the United States.

A few years after the program was initially implemented, a study confirmed its effectiveness: Students who took the class experienced dating violence 2.5 times less than those who hadn’t enrolled. Crooks, a clinical psychologist and researcher, also helped develop versions of the curriculum for Indigenous and refugee students.

“When she developed programs, she’d spend long periods of time, for example, with elders and Indigenous communities getting insights about what was unique about their culture and how young people would learn,” says Peter Jaffe, a professor at Western University. He worked with Crooks on the curriculum.

Before she became a psychologist, Crooks was a competitive undergraduate in Butler College who rowed crew and played rugby. Shauna Rienks ’95, a rugby teammate and close friend, recalls when Crooks injured her leg and had to use a golf cart to get around campus.

“She would drive up from Butler to get me up at Rocky and then we’d go tool around campus. And she’d always have some kind of snacks, like chips and salsa or something,” Rienks says.

As an undergrad, Crooks worked at Camp Wediko, a summer camp for kids with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges.

“She got to work and spent a couple summers at Wediko really working with these kids and really developing a lot of compassion for them and challenging [them],” says George Goodall, Crooks’ husband. Wediko, Goodall says, is where Crooks discovered she wanted to work with youth.

After Princeton, Crooks connected Tiffany Calcutt ’95 with one of the camp directors at Wediko — they’ve now been married for 23 years. “Not only was Claire just an unbelievable friend, she really did give me my adult life,” says Calcutt.

Calcutt and Crooks weren’t especially close during undergrad years but developed an enduring bond in their years beyond FitzRandolph Gate.

In 2023, Calcutt was organizing a gap year trip for her daughter and decided she wanted to combine it with a 50th birthday excursion. She invited Crooks, who brought two of her daughters — which prompted Calcutt to bring her younger daughter too. Together, the crew hiked through Nepal to Annapurna Base Camp.

“It was really mind boggling,” says Calcutt. “A year ago, we were on top … at Annapurna Base Camp, and [a year later Crooks had] stage-four gastric cancer.”

Just a week before she died, Crooks was awarded the Order of Ontario, the highest civilian honor in the province, in recognition of her efforts to end dating violence. Crooks had a fast wit and a great sense of humor, and in a speech after receiving the honor, it was reported in her obituary that she was “humble, funny, grateful, and hopeful.”

“She’s the smartest one in the room, but wouldn’t make people feel like that,” says Rienks.

Goodall says there were two things Crooks emphasized in her life and her practice as a psychologist and academic.

One was “choose to be,” he says. “Choose to do something. Doesn’t matter what it is, but just choose to be.”

The other maybe best summed up her life’s work. “She would always say, you know what? It might not be the day that we want, but it’s the day that we have,” Goodall says. “And so for Claire, always it was about how to use the time that she had.”

Hope Perry ’24 is PAW’s reporting fellow.