Aboriginal Affairs Award
Born in Toronto, Vern Harper's name in Cree is Asini, meaning "stone." He is a Canadian First Nations Cree Elder, medicine man, a Sundancer, Aboriginal rights dissident, and Korean War veteran. This "Urban Elder" as he has been called, is a fifth generation grandson of Mistawasis, a hereditary Cree chief, and a sixth generation grandson of Big Bear.
After facing challenges early in his life, Vern became politically active as vice-president of the Ontario Métis and Non-Status Indian Association (1972-74). He is one of a few First Nations Elders with Chaplain Status recognized by the Correctional Service of Canada.
With his former wife Pauline Shirt Harper, Vern organized the cross Canada Native Peoples' Caravan ending in a lengthy encampment in Ottawa (1974-75). Built upon traditional and spiritual teachings, this demonstration was successful in bringing together native organizations to publicize native grievances. This demonstration opened the door to the first face-to-face meetings between Native leaders and political leaders. In 1979, he wrote about the trek in "Following the Red Path: The Native Peoples' Caravan, 1974." Continuing their commitment to traditional teaching, Pauline and Vern Harper went on to establish the Wandering Spirit Survival School of Toronto in 1976, now known as the First Nations School.
Vern Harper was the subject of the 1979 documentary "Urban Elder," which chronicled his life and role as community leader and Traditional Elder in an urban setting. Presently, Vern Harper serves as Resident Elder at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, further promoting the role of First Nations spirituality in the treatment of mental health and addiction.
Access Award for Disability Issues
The Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre (PARC) originated from the work of volunteers. Established in 1980, PARC began to work with adults living in rooming houses in the Parkdale area. The central focus is on low-income psychiatric survivors who have been de-institutionalized and who have no place to go during the day. Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre has worked to shed light on the desperate need for housing for psychiatric survivors, and has always insisted that people with mental health histories be treated with dignity and respect.
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| Robert Fitzgerald |
Shelley LaHay |
Terence Williams |
PARC provides opportunities for friendship, social interaction, and creative expression. Members can have a shower, receive clothing, emergency food support, a daily meal, and a warm place to sit. They have access to the internet, computer training, volunteer support, transportation assistance, art supply subsidies, emergency housing/shelter referral, emergency warming supplies, outings to local cinema, and many other activities.
PARC has developed new services, advocated for increases to basic needs allowances and worked for the improvement of the quality of life of all psychiatric survivors and marginalized persons.
In keeping with their principles of supporting their members, PARC has created employment opportunities and has hired from the membership. Involving their members with the governance of the organization, 50 per cent of the Board of Directors is designated for members.
Constance E. Hamilton Award on the Status of Women
For over 20 years, June Larkin has contributed to women's studies and more recently to equity studies by making these programs socially relevant through the community relationships that have been formed.
In its 2000 annual survey of Canadian colleges and universities, Maclean's magazine named June Larkin as one of the seven "most popular" professors at the University of Toronto, with her popularity having a foundation in the academic rigour of her work and how she extends academic work into society. Larkin's work was similarly recognized by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) with a teaching award in 2001. She aims to imbue undergraduate education with intellectual rigour and with warmth, generosity and constant support so that the university experience is neither indifferent nor alienating.
She has established close ties with various community groups and conducted many workshops for students, teachers, clinicians, and community service workers, on sexual harassment in schools, violence against women, and gender and HIV/AIDS. This work has taken her across Ontario, Canada as well as to Costa Rica, South Africa, and Namibia. In 2006, she received The Centre for Urban Health/Wellesley Institute Award of Merit for exemplary academic participation in community-based research. Through June Larkin's work in Women's Studies and Equity Studies, she has been instrumental in transforming the general university curriculum to include social justice issues. Her efforts have been characterized as resulting in a seismic change in the undergraduate climate at the university, leading the way to encourage women of colour, with the result that many programs have become flagships for the university's claims to diversity in the student body.
In 2007, June Larkin was appointed Vice-Principal of New College, a position that situates her at the forefront of university-wide aims to improve the student experience.
Helen Liu is a leader in her workplace, advocating for those whose first language is not English. Having worked as a room attendant, Helen has led a large group of Chinese-speaking room attendants to ensure that they can stand up for their workplace rights. Since coming to Canada, Helen has worked at the Fairmont Royal York for nine years. Formerly a teacher in China, Helen has also forged a unique relationship between teachers and hotel workers.
As an active member of the Executive Board and Solidarity Committee of UNITE HERE Local 75, she has spoken out about the often invisible work of women across Toronto who clean hotel rooms. Speaking Mandarin, Cantonese and English, Helen has expanded her role from representing the rights of room attendants to speaking out about the challenges for immigrant workers in Toronto.
Through Hotel Workers' Rising, she has educated people about the challenges of being a new immigrant, and the incredible desire of immigrants to integrate into the mainstream of Canadian society. Helen has made countless presentations about the realities and difficulties of immigrating to Toronto and working in the service sector.
Beverley Wybrow has been in the forefront of the women's movement for about thirty years. She served on the Board of Directors and as President of the Toronto YWCA during the 1980's, where she championed the need to improve labour standards, achieve pay equity, eliminate violence against women and to provide services for women to support their entry and on-going participation in the workforce.
Since its establishment in 1991, Beverley has served as the Executive Director of the Canadian Women's Foundation (CWF) - the only national public foundation designed to raise and distribute funds to meet the specific needs of women and girls across Canada. Through the CWF she has developed programs to help low-income women move out of poverty, to end violence against women and girls and to build resiliency in girls, while at the same time becoming a formidable fund-raiser to support these programs.
Before joining the Foundation, Beverley worked at the Ontario Women's Directorate (a central advocacy agency within the Ontario government) and the Community Information Centre of Metropolitan Toronto where she was Manager of their 24-hour inquiry services. Always in the forefront, she served as the first chair of the Interagency Steering Committee that established the Assaulted Women's Helpline in Toronto.
Her extensive volunteer commitments over the years have been to organizations such as the United Way of Greater Toronto, the Ontario Association of Community Information Centres, the Metro Toronto Coordinating Committee Against Wife Assault, Raising the Roof: Solutions for Canada's Homeless and the Women's Funding Network. She is currently a board member of the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation and the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto.
Pride Award for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual and Two Spirited Issues
Rupert Raj is a Eurasian, trans activist, psychotherapist, occasional university instructor, researcher, writer, consultant and Gender Specialist. From 1971 to 1990, he provided peer education, counselling and advocacy for the transsexual/transvestite and medical/psychological communities across Canada and in the United States. His personal knowledge, expertise and ongoing work in the modern trans movement have always furthered the building of partnerships with emerging communities.
Through workshops and presentations, Rupert has been able to complement his clinical expertise with his personal knowledge and experiences in the struggle for trans rights. In videos, he has shared his personal and activist experiences. "Rupert Remembers" (1999) and episodes of "Skin Deep" (2000/2001) chronicled thirty plus years of trans activism; "Re-writing the Script: A Love Letter to Our Families" reflected the experiences of queer South Asians and their families in Canada.
Rupert currently works at the Sherbourne Health Centre where he is a therapist in the LGBT Program providing counselling to lesbian, gay, bisexual - and especially transsexual and transgender people and their families. In collaboration with his clinical colleagues, he is currently revising SHC's protocols to continue to ensure quality transpositive health care.
As a member of the Rainbow Health Network's Trans Health Lobby Group, Rupert has been lobbying for the re-listing of sex-reassignment surgery for trans people in Ontario, in addition to supporting Bill 168, An Act to Amend the Human Rights Code (Gender Equity) 2007. He will also be helping to set up a Trans Collection at the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives in 2008.
Deb Parent has been an out and proud lesbian 'creating community' in Toronto for over 35 years.
During the late 1970's, Deb Parent was the first lesbian on staff with the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre (TRCC), building consciousness about violence against women through a lens of diversity. In addition to serving four terms on the Board of Directors, Deb developed ground-breaking Wen Do self-defence programs, which not only empowered women, but made a point of embracing lesbians as part of the program.
Through the 1980's, Deb was an active, public member of Lesbians Against The Right, which helped spearhead protests against the appearance of homophobes in Toronto. She also established the Lesbian Speakers Bureau, a collective devoted to public education and to putting a human face on lesbianism.
Deb Parent most surely knows that 'creating community' includes music. She helped organized dyke dances in Toronto from 1983 to 1993 and led Take Back the Night Marches with her sound truck for 20 years. Since 1996, when the Dyke March was established as part of Pride celebrations, Deb has been cranking out the tunes in the lead sound truck, urging her sisters to rise up - and to celebrate our lives. She is a founding member of two lesbian drumming collectives, Joyful Resistance and WombBOOM, which released 2 cds.
Established in 1973, the mission of Central Toronto Youth Services (CTYS) is "to serve youth that experience difficulties in mastering both the developmental and transitional tasks of adolescence and young adulthood ... to identify and meet the needs of high-risk and hard-to-serve youth, their families, and the youth serving community through the provision of direct service programming, advocacy, education and research."
In 1983, CTYS founded the "Sexual Orientation and Youth Program," the first program of its kind in Ontario to provide counselling, groups, research and community education for queer youth. The Pride and Prejudice Program serves lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and transgender (LGBTT) youth through individual and group counselling, research and community development. Since the early 1990's, they have produced several research-based books about LGBTT youth. An additional level of support will be provided through the forthcoming resource guide, "Families in TRANSition," for parents and families of trans youth.
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| Nicola Brown |
LeeAndra Miller |
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| Janis Purdy |
David Yeh |
They have actively participated in research and program evaluation to support their clients and community partners by sponsoring LGBTT youth conferences, the Toronto Youth Coalition for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Youth, and by developing the Supporting Our Youth program.
In January 2007, CTYS began a community-based research project, "The Youth Gender Action Project" (YGAP), to identify gaps in knowledge about the counselling and social service needs of Trans youth. Continually reshaping their work to meet the needs and difficulties presented by the youth they serve, CTYS aims to be up-to-date on emerging youth issues.
William P. Hubbard Award for Race Relations
Afua Cooper wears many hats in the service of making Toronto a better place to live - as historian, educator, researcher, poet, performer, curator, author, organizer and community activist.
For the past two decades, Afua Cooper has been researching, writing, lecturing and publishing in the field of African Toronto/Canadian history. Most recently, she was the founder of the Committee for the Commemoration of the Abolition of the Slave Trade (CMAST). Afua Cooper brought together governments, organizations and a cross section of Canadians to carry out programs to recognize the bicentenary of the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
Nominated for the Governor General's award for non-fiction, her book "The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montreal" contextualized slavery as a Canadian institution. Her commitment to reclaiming the history of the contributions of Black Torontonians to the City's development resulted in two exhibitions which she curated: "The Underground Railroad, Next Stop: Freedom", and "A Glimpse of Black Life in Victorian Toronto, 1850-1860."
From 1994 to 2006, she taught courses in African Canadian history at the University of Toronto and Ryerson University. Afua Cooper actively promotes poetry and spoken word in Toronto. In 1993, Afua was instrumental in bringing over 80 poets and spoken word artists to Toronto for the First International Dub Poetry Festival. She is the author of five books of poetry. Since the founding of the Dub Poets Collective in 2003, she has worked tirelessly to establish Dub Poetry as part of the Canadian literary mainstream.
Anne Gloger's work over the past two decades can be summed up with the words 'partnerships' and 'champion'. Whether the partnerships were between governments and faith communities, or ethnic groups and service organizations, the results have created a welcoming environment that values respect. Following studies in early childhood education and social development, her early years at the YWCA of Kitchener Waterloo focused on after school childcare and access to camp programs for children of diverse backgrounds.
At the 519 Community Centre in Toronto, Anne concentrated on making Family Resources Centres more accessible and inclusive for community members. This included forming a partnership between the 519 Family Resource Centre and the street involved youth at the SHOUT Clinic.
Since 2000, Anne has been developing and co-ordinating the East Scarborough Storefront; a partnership of more than 35 community groups and agencies. 'The Storefront' serves as a meeting and resource centre for a previously under-serviced area of Scarborough. Each of the community's cultural, ethnic, linguistic and age groups who use The Storefront is made to feel that they have come to an inclusive, respectful environment. She has brought together all orders of government, grass roots community projects and social services agencies to provide a full range of services from educational to recreational, and to address legal, employment and mental health issues.
Anne has been a champion for this diverse community when both funding and location were in peril.
Kevin Lee has volunteered and worked for over 20 years in the not-for-profit sector. His volunteer work has involved the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Housing Connections, George Brown College Community Business Centre, Kensington Bellwoods Community Legal Clinic, Toronto Western Hospital, Doctors Hospital and Mount Sinai Hospital. For many years he served as a member of various advisory committees to the City of Toronto, including being a member of the City of Toronto's Service Equity Committee, and Co-chair of the Toronto Mayor's Committee on Community and Race Relations.
Kevin Lee has worked at St. Stephen's Community House and University Settlement Recreation Centre, and for the past ten years has been Executive Director at Scadding Court Community Centre.
His work with newcomers and marginalized low-income diverse communities focuses on issues around poverty, anti-racism, and healthcare access and equity. He has been instrumental in developing and coordinating programs that have kept disadvantaged and alienated youth off the street and out of trouble; these programs have done much to improve racial tensions in the west end inner city.
Kevin initiated the Community Education and Access to Police Complaints Project (CEAPC) which brought together over forty community organizations to carry out public education on police complaints and to develop a detailed analysis of Bill 103: An Act to Establish an Independent Police Review Director and Create a New Public Complaints Process by Amending the Police Services Act.
Kevin Lee is known for being entrepreneurial and persistent grounding his activities in a philosophy that "recognizing the connection between what we do here and the impact this has on other communities and organizations - be they on the other side of the world - reinforces the idea that we must all strive towards creating a more equitable society and opportunities for people who experience barriers." To that end, Kevin devised many programs including a scholarship program, "Investing in our Diversity" with Toronto Community Housing Corporation to assist disadvantaged youth to continue with post-secondary studies and overseas projects to enable youth from low-income communities to develop their abilities as global citizens.
