People from all over the world dream of making it big in Silicon Valley – the headquarters of tech giants like Apple and Facebook. 

Lakehead alum Marcus Khoo is one of the select group who has thrived in its rarified atmosphere.

“I’ve no regrets about coming here,” he says, “but Silicon Valley is a very unforgiving place. Once no longer marketable, you’re cut loose.”

Marcus has 40 years of experience in the electronics and semiconductor field. Twenty-five of those years have been spent with California tech companies, in particular, the Intel Corporation.

“When I started in the semiconductor industry, there were humans working on the manufacturing lines,” Marcus says. “Now, it’s only robots because robots don’t make errors.”

So how did Marcus get from Lakehead to Intel – the world’s largest semiconductor chip manufacturer and renowned developer of personal computer microprocessors?

It was a bit of a winding journey. Marcus grew up in Malaysia and went to high school in Toronto. 

“I wasn’t an “A” student,” he says, “but Lakehead took a risk and offered me a place. Lakehead made me what I am today.” 

Marcus excelled at chemistry as an undergraduate and was helped along by supportive professors.

“Dr. Manit Rappon had the most influence on me,” Marcus says. “In classes, we would frantically take notes, and not really take in what our professors were saying, but Dr. Rappon would tell us: ‘Slow down and try to understand. Learn something when you’re here.’” 

After graduating in 1983, Marcus found a job in Singapore’s semiconductors sector with Siemens and then Hewlett Packard.  One job led to another, and his time overseas stretched into several years.

This turned out to be a good thing because it was in Singapore that Marcus met and married his wife. The couple left the country when a cellphone manufacturer, Novatel, offered Marcus a position to start up their new manufacturing facility in Calgary.

“I told my wife that it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to go back to Canada.”

Later on, while at Raytheon Calgary, Marcus earned a Master of Quality Assurance degree from Loyola University in New Orleans. This degree, which was sponsored by Raytheon, allowed him to go in a different career direction.

“Quality Assurance is about predicting and preventing design and manufacturing problems before they happen,”Marcus explains.  

In 2020, Marcus was promoted to Intel Technical Program Manager to focus on quality system improvements in semiconductor chip design.

Quality problems are common in the chip industry because the chips are so complex. These tiny components made of silicon – and used in products like cell phones, computers, and automobiles – have become indispensable to modern life.  

“We’re always trying to push laptop and computer technology one generation ahead,” Marcus says. “Chips for laptops and computers have to be ready two years in advance so that laptop and computer manufacturers are able to design their next generation of end products. We are constantly reinventing ourselves. Every error I’m trying to prevent is one I’ve never seen before.”

Marcus’s day is long, starting at 7 am and ending at 7 pm, with a few breaks in between.

“Typically, I spend 6-7 hours on conference calls. Intel has 120,000 employees around the world, including Israel, Ireland, Shanghai, and Costa Rica. This means that it’s always daytime somewhere.”

Despite the pressures he faces, Marcus is passionate about his profession, and he encourages any Lakehead grad with Silicon Valley aspirations to contact him. “I’m more than happy to help them get there,” he says.

There is one thing that Marcus does regret.

“I haven’t been back to Thunder Bay since I graduated. It’s on my bucket list to visit Lakehead, walk around the campus, and see how it’s changed.”

When she was just a high school student, Megan Rafuse (HBSW'09) lost her mother to cancer. 

“Her death really drove my career choices,” Megan says. “It made me unafraid to take risks, because I learned that you don’t get a second chance to live your life.”

And in a short period of time, Megan has transformed her private counselling practice into a company with services and clinicians across Canada. She is the CEO of Shift Collab – a mental wellness company that offers individual therapy and counselling, public speaking, and education.

“Typical challenges Canadians are dealing with,” she says, “include anxiety, depression, grief and loss, life transitions, obsessive compulsive disorders, and eating disorders.”

Megan grew up on Cape Breton Island and did an undergraduate psychology degree at St. Francis Xavier University. She followed this with an Honours Bachelor of Social Work at Lakehead’s Orillia campus, a master’s degree at the University of Toronto, and work at SickKids hospital. 

Her professional life, though, began in earnest organizing home care for seniors with an Ontario Community Care Access Centre (CCAC), while simultaneously expanding her private practice.

Five years later, Megan realized how much she loved being a clinician and that having two jobs wasn’t sustainable, prompting her to become a full-time mental health therapist.

“It’s such a privilege to share a journey with someone and witness their growth,” she says. “I believe that when one teaches, two learn.”

Within three months, her private practice was entirely full, spurring her to hire 10 clinicians and a receptionist. Around the same time, she’d been chatting with Jordan Axani, who had a business offering mental health workshops and training for workplaces.

“We both wanted to make mental wellness more accessible, so we decided to work together,” Megan says.

Although the founding of Shift Collab should have been a time of excitement and celebration, it became a period when Megan’s perseverance was tested.

“I suffered a catastrophic major concussion in a car accident and was off work for six months while I recovered,” she says.

But this setback didn’t slow her down for long. She and Jordan, who is also her life partner, threw their energy into building Shift Collab.

Today, their company has several divisions. Shift Collab provides individual therapy and counselling. Shift People  provides mental health workshops, public speaking, and training for businesses and organizations throughout North America. 

“Our goal is to challenge the standard EAP – employee assistance program – and offer more robust and innovative programming,” Megan explains. 

Through a partnership with the Maple network of virtual health care providers, they have 85 clinicians available in cities from coast to coast.

“I’m really proud of the fact that we offer practicums to Lakehead students and that we’ve hired nine Lakehead grads as clinicians,” Megan adds.

Their Best Practice division is a community of over 1,000 therapists supporting each other in building modern mental health clinics.

Shift Collab was also responsible for joining forces with an insurance company to create Real Campus, Canada’s largest independent student assistance program. “It provided mental health counselling to about 250,000 students, paid through their student benefits.”

Since she’s started her career, Megan has seen a huge shift in people’s willingness to speak out about mental health. “They don’t wait until it’s a crisis before getting help,” she says. 

“We’re in a society where it’s very easy to compare our lives to someone’s social media highlight reel. But we have to remember, it’s just their reel – not their real life.”

Megan Rafuse is just one the exceptional alumni, students, researchers, and donors featured in Lakehead's Annual Report. Stay tuned for the official report launch in February to find out how Lakehead has been making a difference this past year. 

In the face of the brutality of racism, Lakehead alumnus Paul Popo-Ola (HBCom’10) is shaken, but unbowed.

The Lakehead alum has set his sights on helping Toronto inner-city kids escape the lives of poverty to which they are often condemned. In 2020, Paul and a group of friends set up the Black Health and Wealth Fund to provide university entrance scholarships to grade 12 students. It’s Paul’s latest advocacy project, and one close to his heart.

“My family left Ghana when I was eight years old to come to Canada,” he says.

They ended up in Toronto’s Rexdale area – one of the toughest neighbourhoods in the country. “There’s a lot of poverty and government housing,” Paul explains. 

In Ghana, Paul’s father was a bank employee and his mother was a registered nurse, but in their new homeland, they found themselves at the bottom of the social ladder. Paul’s mother worked at McDonald’s until she requalified as a nurse and his father worked in factories before becoming a church pastor. 

Along with these hardships, their young son was confronting harmful prejudices and stereotypes. 

“Most of my friends are Black, and when we were kids,” Paul says, “we thought the only things we could be were athletes, rappers, and drug dealers.”

Paul began getting into trouble, to the distress of his parents and older brothers, but the YMCA and Rexdale’s Albion Neighbourhood Boys and Girls club threw him the lifeline he needed.

“Sports got me out the bubble I was trapped in. Coaches waived my registration fees and helped me buy basketball shoes,” he says. “If I got a bad grade, my coach would say, ‘Paul you can do better.’”

When he finished high school, Paul went to Lakehead University on a basketball scholarship. He enrolled in the commerce program because it offered financial security and career avenues beyond athletics.

But Paul wasn’t just concerned about himself. As a university student, he volunteered with the Thunder Bay Boys and Girls club (he was named their 2011 Volunteer of the Year) and Shelter House.

Since graduating, Paul has become an Investment Advisor with RBC Dominion Securities based in Toronto. He frequently counsels newcomers to Canada, and he encourages financial literacy as the host of the Cash Rules Financial Podcast.

His success, though, doesn’t mean that the struggle for racial equality is over.

Paul and friends were traumatized by videos of verbal and physical attacks against Black people – especially the murder  of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer – that occurred in 2020. The assaults galvanized them to support the current generation of kids growing up in Rexdale through the Black Health and Wealth Fund.

They quickly raised over $40,000 for 12 scholarships and forged connections with Canadian universities, including Lakehead, who donated tuition credits, meal plans, and other services to the students (next year, they hope to increase the number of scholarships). They partnered with the Albion Neighbourhood Boys and Girls Club because, as an existing non-profit, they had the authority to distribute scholarship funds.

Pictured right:  Paul (centre) and his fellow members of the Black Health and Wealth Fund executive are changing the lives of vulnerable youth.

The Black Health and Wealth Fund members are also committed to nurturing the students.

“We didn’t want to hand the kids money and say, ‘See you later,’” Paul says. “Every one of them received mentorship in different areas – financial literacy, public speaking, good life habits, healthy living.”

Although Paul is doing his part to make the world a place where everyone is valued, he would like to see the media – and ordinary citizens – better educate themselves and overcome their biases.

“Black Canadians aren’t monolithic,” he says, “so don’t put us in a box, just give us a fair playing field.”

Watch the Black Health and Wealth Fund video to learn more about these transformative scholarships and how you can make a difference:  https://youtu.be/lGnh9OUnzuc

Mike Carlson knows firsthand some of the challenges faced by reporters today, especially with many people believing that the news is fake. 

Mike earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Bachelor of Education – both at Lakehead University. He is a professional sports photographer who has covered the National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, and Major League Baseball. 

His advice to prospective journalists is that they must have persistence. 

“Journalism/photojournalism is a truly rewarding career, but with the recent developments in calling everything ‘fake news’ and disdain for the job by many – it does make it more difficult. 

“No one I know, and no one I’ve trained ever goes into it with an ‘agenda.’ I believe in presenting the truth without bias, and it’s an important trait for successful journalists,” he says, adding that it is also important for journalists to be multifaceted – so they can contribute in many different ways.

“I have the rare opportunity in professional sports to work with teams who have writers, videographers, and photographers – in many instances in journalism today one person should be prepared to do all of that,” he says. 

Based in Tampa, Fla., Mike also teaches digital multimedia courses at River Ridge High School. His students learn photography, illustration, graphic design, and video – skills they can eventually use in journalism. The school displays their work on its website and social media pages, among other places.  

It has been an interesting journey since he graduated from Lakehead University in the 1990s. In 1997, he moved to Istanbul to teach and bought a new printer that included a 35 mm film camera. 

“I figured since I was seeing a whole new world I may as well take some photos – and that’s when I became hooked,” he says. 

When Mike moved to Cairo, he would often visit a photography store owned by an Egyptian man who had lived in the US. That man soon recognized Mike had an eye for photography. 

“He gifted me an old Canon T50 – a fully manual film camera, which forced me to slow down and concentrate on all of the settings. This allowed me to really learn how all settings combined in a photo.” 

When his wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer, photography gave Mike a brief break from reality – and photography has continued to do that in the years since her passing.   

Mike, who grew up in Thunder Bay, says his favourite sport to photograph is either football or hockey. 

“I love the challenge of football because so much is potentially happening on every play. It means balancing three cameras and choosing a position carefully while at the same time reacting to the plays and fakes at NFL speed. It moves a lot faster down on field level. 

“But, I also love hockey – it’s the Canadian in me. It’s a different challenge shooting through a small hole in the glass and reacting at NHL speed . . . plus it’s a lot more comfortable in an arena than a 110 degree field in the Florida sunshine,” he says. 

Mike says the introduction of digital photography changed the game for professional sports photographers. 

“The challenge with digital in today’s world is the expectation that the results are delivered instantaneously, especially in sports. There is a constant race to have the photo out first. For most NFL games and big events, we all have internet-connected cameras that transfer photos of big plays to an editor, with the goal to have images available to post within a minute or less of them happening.” 

One of the highlights of Mike’s career occurred in 2013 when his photo of Alex Rodriguez ran on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

When he isn’t photographing winning touch downs or goals, Mike looks back fondly on the years he spent at Lakehead University, which he says changed his life.

“Being able to get into the concurrent education program allowed me to follow my passion at the time and get into education – both of my parents were long-time teachers in Thunder Bay,” he says. 

“It was also at Lakehead where I met and made connections to other teacher grads who headed out on the international school circuit and who introduced it to me.” 

While at Lakehead, he often frequented the Outpost Campus Pub. 

“I lived five minutes from campus, so the Outpost was where I spent time on campus with friends from out of town or who lived on campus. Studying, socializing, it gave me the chance to meet and get to know people who became life-long friends,” he says. 

Not only did Mike love attending school, he also enjoys teaching. Since graduating, Mike has taught in Canada, the United States, Turkey, Egypt, and Tanzania. 

“Through all of the diversity in schools/curricula/countries, the one thing that hasn’t changed is the students. Working with them on projects, on the fields, in the gym, in my studios, I just enjoy the energy and creativity (and chaos) of the teenage mind.

“It’s hard to truly explain, but a teacher will understand,” Mike says. 

Mike would love to hear from friends and former classmates. He is on Instagram (@carlsonphotos) and his website is mcarlson.photoshelter.com. 

John Hammill is the regional publisher of OrilliaMatters, an exclusively online site that provides breaking news and vital local information to its readers.

After joining forces with Village Media, which has perfected the online news model over the past 10 years, John and his team launched the site on January 8, 2018 – only six weeks after Postmedia shuttered the Orillia Packet and Times.

He had worked for a few different newspapers before becoming the regional advertising director at the Orillia Packet and Times, which is why he was ready to move forward with OrilliaMatters when Postmedia closed the newspaper on November 27, 2017.

And he hasn’t looked back.

Even before launching, OrilliaMatters had overwhelming support from local residents and businesses.

“Orillia had a daily newspaper for over 50 years and that daily news coverage ceased with the closure of the Packet and Times,” John says.

“Advertisers and readers were accustomed to the daily news cycle and that was pulled out from under them with no notice. We had launch sponsors lined up two weeks before our go-live date, which was a great indicator of things to come.”

From the Orillia Packet, John brought in regional editor Dave Dawson, reporters Nathan Taylor and Tyler Evans, and around a half dozen regularly contributing freelancers.

During the lead-up to launching OrilliaMatters, John didn’t experience much negativity about their plans, but some people were a bit confused about how the news site would operate.

“There were some questions about the format, so we launched a campaign to educate readers on adapting to our online news website,” John says.

“As soon as they experienced OrilliaMatters and saw first-hand how easy it was to navigate and find the content they had been missing, all was good.”

Providing timely, accurate and vital important information about COVID-19 helped OrilliaMatters grow even more, although the site’s numbers were strong from the beginning.

“We broke 650,000 monthly page views in our first month, which was a remarkable start,” John says. “Our current monthly page view average is 3.2 million.”

By selling advertisements and encouraging donations from readers, OrilliaMatters is thriving in a community that was hungry for news.

John says the secret to succeeding in the news business today is simple: Quality journalism is the solution.

“It's just the delivery mechanism - the internet - that has changed. Whatever the delivery mechanism, it always comes back to valuable, quality, verified journalism.”

The best way to offer that, John says, is by hiring journalists who know what they are doing. 

“We rely on trained, professional reporters. While we definitely encourage and publish user-generated content, nothing can replace newsgathering from a properly trained, unbiased reporter.”

John graduated from the BAdmin program at Lakehead University Thunder Bay in 1996. He truly enjoyed living in the city, including spending time outdoors. It was also where he met his wife Laura.

“It was great to learn about Finnish traditions as my wife’s family are Finlanders. We spent a few mornings at the Hoito (Restaurant) – that’s for sure. Walking/running at Boulevard Lake and swimming/diving at the Canada Games Complex. Starting a round of golf at 6 pm in May was always a cool experience too.”

John also appreciates living in Orillia, home to Lakehead’s newest campus.

“I love the sports amenities, parks, etc. here as they are all fantastic. The baseball/softball community is huge here and playing/coaching has been a blast over the years.

“There are lots of active service clubs such as Kiwanis, Lions and my Rotary Club that really do make a difference in and around the community. Mariposa Market, enough said. Orillia is truly Mariposa,” he says.

He appreciated studying at Lakehead University.

“I loved the fact that the classroom sizes were smaller than other universities; I found I was able to pick things up fairly quickly,” he says.

“I didn’t fall in love with teaching until I started doing it. Now it’s an integral part of who I am,” says Greg Chomut, who teaches history, art, and media at Thunder Bay’s Dennis Franklin Cromarty (DFC) High School.

The school is administered by the Northern Nishnawbe Education Council and the students come from 24 Indigenous communities in Northwestern Ontario.

“It’s a big sacrifice to leave everything you know at the age of 13 or 14 and live in a stranger’s house,” Greg says. “Because of that, they deserve the best – the best school, the best learning equipment, the best textbooks.”

The best, unfortunately, is often elusive for these youngsters.

“As a non-Indigenous person, I was unaware of a lot of the racism in Thunder Bay until I started teaching at Dennis Franklin Cromarty,” he says. “But students were always telling me about their experiences being followed at retail stores by security guards or being suspected of doing something wrong wherever they went.”

People yelling racial slurs is also depressingly common. 

“I knew that there were good people and organizations in Thunder Bay, but my students weren’t connecting with them.” 

This prompted Greg, and his fellow DFC teachers Sean Spenrath and Angus Haapa, to create Wake the Giant in 2019 – an orientation for grade 7 and 8 students planning to attend high school in Thunder Bay.

Soon, Wake the Giant stickers were going up in the windows of local businesses to show their support for Indigenous people.

“The students were really excited about the stickers,” Greg says. “They’ve told me that when they see them, they know that people care about them.”

Wake the Giant officially launched with a day of workshops for the students, followed by an Amazing Race-style event in which students used city buses to navigate around town and discover different services and cultural and recreational opportunities available to them.

On the closing day, Greg and his colleagues organized a music festival for the entire city of Thunder Bay in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous musicians – including DFC students – performed on stage at Marina Park.  The success of Wake the Giant led to the decision to make it an annual event, and they just hosted the 2021 festival this September (COVID-19 forced the postponement of the 2020 festival). 

Greg, who is a guitarist and the lead singer of the band Luke Warm and the Cold Ones, has also found other ways to incorporate music into the curriculum.

Photo right:  “Dennis Franklin Cromarty is the students’ whole life when they’re here,” Greg says. “Most schools empty out when the bell rings, but at our school, the kids are here until eight o’clock at night. There are activities going on in every room, for example, I coach cross country running and coordinate the art club.”

“A couple of years ago, we wrote a song with some of Canada’s biggest musicians – the bands July Talk and Broken Social Scene and Indigenous musicians Ansley Simpson, Cris Derksen, and Nick Ferrio. We recorded Mourning Keeps Coming Back at a Toronto studio that’s available on Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming sites.”

As their musical journey progressed, Greg saw some amazing transformations in the students.

“The three girls singing backup melodies were so self-conscious that the lights in the recording studio had to be turned off and everyone had to leave the room. They held hands and sang so quietly. Fast forward two years, and they’re belting out the song to 4,000 people – there wasn’t a dry eye in the audience.” 

In recognition of Greg’s inspirational teaching, he received a 2020 Certificate of Achievement from the Prime Minister’s Awards for Teaching Excellence program.

But Greg thinks that all of us can change things for the better.

“Take some time to learn about the history of First Nations people and take a stand against racism.”

Visit wakethegiant.ca to find out how you can make Thunder Bay a more welcoming place.

Above photo (Ann-Marie digging in garden):

“Gardening and food security has become something I’m spending more time on,” Ann-Marie says. She is part of Barrie Urban Gardening initiatives and recently joined the Barrie Communities in Bloom Committee. “Last year, I worked on a new 15,000-square-foot community garden that donates vegetables to local agencies in Barrie.”

Barrie city councillor Ann-Marie Kungl is a virtuoso at juggling many things – from volunteering at COVID-19 vaccine clinics to informing Barrie’s Age Friendly Community Plan to part-time beekeeping.

She also has more than 18 years of health system experience that she puts to good use as the CEO of Kungl Consulting, a company that provides health and mediation services. Having such a diversity of interests isn’t a new phenomenon for Ann-Marie. “My pathway in life hasn’t been linear in any way,” she says. 

Things seemed to have started, though, with a love of athletics.

“I played every sport possible growing up,” she says, “and I studied physical education at Brock University.”

After graduation, Ann-Marie was hired as physiology lab coordinator at Queen’s University. “I was looking for opportunities to tie physical and health education to a career,” she explains.

She oversaw randomized control trials looking at the effect of physical activity on seniors’ health. The experiments demonstrated that exercise could have a major impact on well-being, inspiring Ann-Marie to make public health her lifelong calling.

“The acute health care system reacts to injury, illness, and disease,” she says. “I wanted to bring preventative public health policy into areas that I felt should be incorporated into health-care decision making.”

Pictured right: Ann-Marie holds a copy of her Lakehead University master’s thesis.

Ann-Marie enrolled in Lakehead University’s Master of Public Health program and, while still a student, was hired by Cancer Care Ontario’s prevention unit to work with the Ontario Chronic Disease Prevention Alliance.

This, in turn, led to a job with the Ontario Public Health Association. By 2006, Ann-Marie was one of the first staff members with the province’s newly established Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs).

These jobs were excellent training for Ann-Marie’s entry into the government-funded home care sector.  In 2013, she joined the North Simcoe Muskoka Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) as the Director of Communications and Organizational Development working with patients and their caregivers to improve services and ensure that the voices of patients informed service delivery and access to care.

She also became adept at helping families navigate through difficult situations and provided community education on the importance of advanced care planning.

Dealing with complex family and health situations and resolving conflicts prompted Ann-Marie to earn health law and dispute resolution certificates from York University to enhance her communication and mediation skills.

“You can apply those skillsets around the boardroom table in conflict resolution situations,” Ann-Marie says, “and this supported the next step in my career path. I founded Kungl Consulting in 2018 to provide health strategy planning, policy writing, and dispute resolution services.” 

Her shift to entrepreneurship was also motivated by the need for flexible working hours because she had her sights on a new challenge – municipal politics.

“I realized that cities had a huge influence on public health and that being a councillor would support my passion for community wellbeing,” Ann-Marie says.

She was elected to Barrie’s city council in 2020 and she’s currently part of committees addressing affordable housing, homelessness, human services, food insecurity, seniors’ wellness, and reducing barriers for women interested in political office.

“Being a city councillor is allowing me to broaden the public health conversation,” Ann-Marie says. “I want to help people live well and thrive by advocating for good public policy.”

Pictured above: Ann-Marie stands beside City of Barrie sign (credit: Chris Simon/Simcoe.com)

The role of cities in improving public health includes providing affordable housing and reducing homelessness. “Barrie has one of the highest rental rates in the country,” Ann-Marie says, “and we need to support seniors in maintaining access to housing.”

Rudy Grewal’s name and face have become recognizable over the last few years at Lakehead Orillia and in Simcoe County in general.

The Barrie man has played an important role in encouraging diversity and inclusion on campus. Through his involvement with the Office of Human Rights and Equity (OHRE), Rudy promoted International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to the Orillia campus for the first time in 2019.

He educated and informed students to become allies by taking a stand against racism and discrimination while hosting a resource table in the Learning Commons.

Rudy also served as co-chair of the #ITSTARTS Campaign at Lakehead Orillia, where he led others in celebrating diversity, inclusion and acceptance. These efforts and more earned Rudy a Lakehead Leader Award for 2019-2020 and a Service Excellence Award at the County of Simcoe’s 2020 Newcomer Recognition Awards.

For as long as Rudy can remember, he has always tried to help anyone – or anything – in need.

“At the age of four or five, I remember nursing an injured little sparrow back to health,” he said.

The bird eventually became well enough to leave the makeshift nest that Rudy had built outside.

Years later when he was in school, Rudy wanted to buy a new music book for a student who couldn't afford it. Luckily, the teacher stepped in with a discounted book that the student could purchase.

“This was one of my first lessons that there are others who are willing to help, and there are different ways of helping,” he says.

Born in Brampton, Rudy grew up in several different parts of Ontario and briefly in India, ending up in Barrie in 2004.

As a racialized person, he has experienced racism – and that is part of why he speaks up.  

“Another reason I get involved now is for my children, as it breaks my heart to see them going through similar things that I went through,” Rudy says.

“Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. marched in 1963 and told the world about his dream, and here we are almost 60 years later, still marching. Generation after generation of inequities, sub-standard living conditions, and stolen opportunities. I get involved because it has to end.”

Rudy has faced other challenges throughout his life. He still remembers how difficult it was to return to school as an adult in 2017 – when most of his classmates were considerably younger. To anyone considering attending university, Rudy says if he can do it, you can too.

“Where there's a will, there's a way,” he says.

“Though there are different stressors as an adult going back to school, you also bring with you a wealth of life experience. You may be surprised at how much experience you can apply to your studies and scholarly pursuits.” 

Since starting at Lakehead Orillia in September 2017, Rudy and his wife Megan have had to transition their brick and mortar family business to a completely different online venture; take care of sick relatives, including some who were critically ill and cancer patients; deal with the loss of five family members, including two parents; take care of their six children at home; “and, let's not forget riding the wave of a global pandemic and all that brings,” he says.

They were also working to continue paying bills. During that time, Rudy completed all requirements to receive his HBASc, and he is scheduled to complete his HBSW this spring.

And, Megan, who has been studying online through Lakehead Thunder Bay, will receive her BA in Gender and Women Studies this spring, too.

“It's amazing what can be accomplished when a good team works together,” Rudy says, adding that he has truly enjoyed studying at Lakehead Orillia.

“Lakehead Orillia was the perfect fit for me,” he says.

“I considered a couple of other universities, but the small-class sizes at Lakehead Orillia afforded me the one-on-one attention I needed to build a solid foundation for my post-secondary career.”

He will be pursuing his master’s in social work and then perhaps a PhD, with the goal of working in addictions as well as possibly getting involved in municipal politics to help bring about change that way as well.

Rudy will be speaking at a cultural competency training event with the Barrie Chamber of Commerce on Thursday, May 6, to help local business owners be proactive about anti-racism, equity, diversity and inclusion.

He has also been doing research for the Simcoe County Diversity Hub, which brings attention to racism and discrimination while promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion in the community.

For more information about the Simcoe County Diversity Hub, contact the Simcoe County Local Immigration Partnership at sclip@simcoe.ca.

Sarah Valiquette-Thompson (BA’15) has been a restaurant owner, a city councillor, and a private investigator – but advocating for people with disabilities is the role closest to her heart.

Pictured above:  Sarah and Harvey visit a classroom. Before becoming a Down Syndrome advocate, Sarah was private investigator for several years. “I had so much fun – every file I got was a new adventure, but it could also be kind of dangerous. I got into some intense situations,” she says.

When she and her husband Ian were expecting Harvey, their second child, a prenatal screening test indicated that Harvey had Down Syndrome. What happened next sent the couple into a tailspin.

“I was referred to different specialists for echocardiograms, ultrasounds, and other tests,” Sarah says.

Many of the health care professionals they dealt with rattled off a long list of things their son wouldn’t be able to do, including feed himself.

“They questioned why we would want to continue with the pregnancy,” Sarah says. “They basically said our son would be a burden to us and his sister. We were scared because we didn’t know if he would have much of a life.”

It was only through internet searches about Down Syndrome, and by connecting with other families who’d had a prenatal Down Syndrome diagnosis, that they were able to begin sorting fact from fiction.

“We realized that it wasn’t just us who were being told these horrible things about our unborn child, it was happening across Canada,” Sarah says.

Talking to other parents also reassured them that their child could thrive.

“I can tell you that after three years of being Harvey’s mom, that three-quarters of the things on that list are very antiquated, and for us, we didn't experience most of them. He has been able to reach all his milestones and transition into daycare. Early intervention programs – speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physiotherapy – have been amazing.”  

Pictured right:  In 2018, alumna Sarah Valiquette-Thompson formed a small passionate grassroots group that is pushing forward a private member’s bill in the Ontario legislature to give parents who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down Syndrome more accurate information.  Photo credit: Joanna Crichton

Sarah channeled the emotional devastation she went through into a mission to demolish harmful stereotypes and help families who receive a Down Syndrome diagnosis. “The information desperately needs to be updated so that it is the same and consistent – no matter where one lives in the province.”

Sometimes people with Down Syndrome are devalued as human beings,” she says. “My son hadn’t even drawn his first breath and he was being dismissed.”

She reached out to Ontario MPP Sara Singh whose sister, Gurvir, has Down Syndrome.

For the last year and a half, the two women and the Down syndrome Association of Ontario (DSAO), as well as many in the Down Syndrome community, collaborated to draft the first piece of legislation in Canada addressing how a prenatal diagnosis of Down Syndrome is delivered.

“MPP Singh introduced Harvey & Gurvir’s Law in November 2020, during Canadian Down Syndrome Awareness Week,” Sarah says. “It was a historic and very emotional day – I still get teary eyed when I watch the video announcement.”

The bill hasn’t received Royal Assent yet, but Sarah hopes it will be ratified by the summer of 2021.

Pictured left: DSAO Chair Domenic Gentilini, MPP Sara Singh, and Sarah at Queen’s Park:
Sarah watched Harvey and Gurvir’s Law, formally known as Bill 225, signed live. “Because of COVID, I couldn’t be there in person at the Ontario legislature, but MPP Singh and I held a press conference afterwards with the chair of the Down Syndrome Association of Ontario.”

If it passes, when parents are told that their child has Down Syndrome, they will also walk away with up-to-date ministry-approved information about the condition so that they can make the best decision about the pregnancy.

The bill will also enshrine a 48-hour waiting period (which parents can waive) after getting a diagnosis to give people time to process the news.

Sarah is now carrying on her advocacy work in Nova Scotia.

“I was supposed to go back to Lakehead Orillia in September 2020 but then COVID-19 hit, and everything fell apart – my son’s daycare closed and our restaurant in Washago really took a hit.

They decided to move to Nova Scotia because of its excellent supports for people with disabilities and because they have family connections there.

Sarah is now turning her attention to making her new province an even more inclusive one.

“It breaks you when someone you love is treated as if they’re not important,” she says.

Please click here to sign MPP Singh’s petition to support Harvey & Gurvir’s law and support their mission for inclusivity. 

“Right after I graduated from Lakehead with my Honours of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Education, I moved to God’s Lake First Nation to teach,” says Heather Mason (née Martin) (HFA/BEd'08). “I didn’t want to be stuck substitute teaching in southern Ontario for years and years.”

God’s Lake is fly-in reserve 550 km north of Winnipeg – the community is only accessible by plane or by winter roads when the ice freezes. “I’ve always been drawn to the outdoors,” Heather says, “and it seemed like a really exciting adventure.” 

She describes the people in this community of just over 3,000 as “friendly, funny, warm, and welcoming.”

It was a life-changing decision – she stepped into a challenging career, teaching children from Grade 3 to Grade 9 and when she wasn’t teaching, she was coaching basketball, volleyball, cross country running, and badminton.

Heather met her husband in God’s Lake and became a parent to two stepchildren – a girl and a boy. The couple also has a seven-year-old-son and a 17-year-old foster son. “They’re great kids,” Heather says, “They are very calm and respectful and we’re extremely proud of them.”

Becoming part of the God’s Lake community has given Heather the chance to engage her students’ creative abilities.

“Our school doesn’t have an arts program,” she explains, “so I’m always looking for grants that enable artists to come to the community. We’ve had drummers and mural artists come to our school, as well as a music video production crew – N’we Jinan – that made a professional video with the students called “Back to Us.”

One of her more recent projects in collaboration with fellow artist Kevin Burton, “Nisitotah,” received a grant from The Manitoba Arts Council.

“It means “to listen” in Cree,” Heather says. “We invited artists in the God’s Lake community to listen to stories from Elders and then create paintings inspired by these stories. It was a different way to pass on oral history and traditions.”

These kinds of endeavours, and Heather’s commitment to her students, led to her receiving a CBC Manitoba Future 40 award in the category of Arts, Culture & Entertainment in 2020. Every year, these awards are given to an outstanding group of 40 individuals under 40 years of age.

Several months ago, Heather embarked on a new chapter in her teaching journey. In August 2020, she became the vice-principal of the God’s Lake Narrows First Nation School because, she says, “I wanted to be a champion for the staff and help change the system.” This had been a long-term goal that prompted Heather to earn a Master of Educational Leadership and Administration from Brandon University in 2019.

Although Heather is happy with the new course she’s chosen, she does miss the day-to-day interactions with the students. One of her favourite activities as a teacher was organizing the Grade 9 students’ yearly graduation trip to Churchill, Manitoba.

“It requires huge amount of planning,” Heather says, “but the payoff was watching the students’ excitement when they boarded a train for the first time or kayaked and paddle boarded with beluga whales. It connects them to their peers, the land, and wildlife all at once.”

These kinds of experiences reaffirm that coming to God’s Lake all those years ago was one of the best decisions Heather has ever made.