Mrs. Niki Psiharis, of Laval, was the 2013 National Memorial (Silver) Cross Mother and the sixth mother from Québec to be named by the Royal Canadian Legion. During the national Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa on November 11, 2013, she laid a wreath at the base of the National War Memorial on behalf of all mothers who have lost a child in military service to Canada.

On June 20, 2007, her youngest son, Sergeant Chris Karigiannis, was killed when an improvised explosive device struck his vehicle approximately 40 kilometers west of Kandahar City, Afghanistan—less than two months before his scheduled return home.

Despite her terrible loss, Mrs. Psiharis has maintained a positive outlook and has been an exemplary citizen, committed to engaging youth in remembrance. Since 2009, Mrs. Psiharis has accompanied students, from her son’s former high school to the national Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa and is the driving force behind having these same students completing more than 100,000 volunteer hours in the community.

Mrs. Psiharis was born in a village of less than 200 people outside of Kalamata, Greece, and married Anastasios Karigiannis when she was 18. They immigrated to Montréal, Québec, in 1968 and had three sons–Peter, Spiro and Chris. In 1990, she was widowed when her husband succumbed to cancer, leaving her to raise three teenaged sons on her own.

Mrs. Psiharis worked in the textile and building maintenance industries, retiring in 2001.