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some of the climbers who had perished during their summit attempt on May 19. It is said that some 80 bodies remain on the mountain, there as a reminder of the risk to those ascending to 8,848 metres in dangerously thin air. It was Leduc, a newcomer to Twit- While climbing, Leduc would pass by ter, who typed the now-famous 12-word description of the scene on Everest that was used in countless media reports in May: "Lots of dead or dying bodies. Thought I was in a morgue. gen regulator had frozen on the way down from her first summit attempt, forcing her to climb back down to Camp 4, located at 8,000 m, without oxygen for about three hours. The area on Everest above Camp 4 is commonly referred to as the "death zone" because above that elevation, the human body begins to deteriorate rapidly, with vital organs shutting down due to the extreme lack of oxygen. Most climbers use bottled oxygen above 7,000 m which, at the summit, lowers the physiological elevation of Everest by some 1,000 m — climbing without oxygen is a truly dan- gerous exercise because rational thought seriously decreases while chances of frost- bite and exposure dramatically increase. Leduc would later tweet that her oxy- " Sandra Leduc has worked around the world including North Korea and Afghanistan. even more challenging because Sandra and her brother Kevin spoke only French. Sandra has not forgotten sitting in a car outside the Los Angeles International Airport, looking out the window with a puzzled expression as her father Leo spoke with a stranger in a language that to her was gibberish. Then, conversation complete, he took the wheel and drove his family off into the Southern California sun to begin another family adventure. It "WE SPENT MOST OF OUR TIME IN A COMPOUND BUT THE REALITY IS THAT WE LIVED IN A WAR ZONE. YOU LIVE WITH THAT FACT. YOU SET IT ASIDE AND YOU DO YOUR WORK AND CHANCES ARE NOTHING'S GOING TO HAPPEN." In fact, statistically, climbers who do not use oxygen are two times more likely to die on Everest than those who do. Leduc' father's adventure movie goes back 30 s first memory of being in her years when she was four. She remembers arriving in Los Angeles from Gatineau, Que., where her father was beginning a four-year stint at the Consulate General of Canada. The Leducs landed in a world famous for its eccentricities and made took Sandra just three months in L.A. to become fluent in English. She followed that with Spanish and, as an adult, mas- tered the ability to read and write Hindi, Arabic, and Dari, one of two official lan- guages of Afghanistan. Sandra was not scared by Los Angeles, than they did their own country. She was a "dip brat" and was already conditioned to be on the move. Borders were not bar- riers to the Leducs, but merely passage- ways to other experiences. Leduc' followed thatmodus operandi. Her moth- er Ginette flew from Indonesia, where they were living while her father worked for the Canadian embassy in Jakarta, to give birth in Singapore because of its then more-trustworthy health care. Three days later, her mom and her were back on the plane "home. s entrance into the world in 1977 but rather excited by the possibility of liv- ing in a new place. She and Kevin would become so attached to it that she says at one time they knew more about the U.S. 26 OCTO BER 2012 www.CANADIAN Lawyermag.com already crossed the first of many borders. By the time she was eight, Leduc had lived on three different continents. Kevin, who is 15 months older, could claim one more continent by the age of nine. He was born in 1976 in Caracas, Venezuela, where their father was working at the Canadian embassy. The Leducs returned from Indonesia " Three days old and she'd to the Ottawa area for two years before leaving for Los Angeles. Possibly her most important experience as a youth came during the two years her family spent in PhotoS courteSy oF Sandra leduc

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