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DR. BARBARA HARRIS NAMED COURAGE TO COME BACK AWARD RECIPIENT

Photo credit: Nick Procaylo/PNG

Her father, a residential school survivor, left her home months before Barbara was born. Also, at just under two years old, her sister died in a tragic accident, and she was separated from her family for a few months, until her mother was able to care for her and her brother again. During her early school years she was bullied, and she was also threatened and sexually manhandled for four years. At age 13, she ran away from home, to Vancouver, where she just attempted to sustain. Two years later she was lured to the United States where the attempt was made to force her into the hook-up trade, albeit she managed to get a job as a stripper. She was hammered daily except when she got paid, but after about five weeks, another stripper helped her to escape, and she returned to Vancouver.

Back in Vancouver and entirely traumatized, she became deeply depressed and suicidal, and got into heroin which provided ease from the PTSD. After a year, she found herself on the floor of a condemned house, pleading to die. But she lived, quitting cold turkey, tho’ continuing to abate her trauma with alcohol, working in the entertainment business until age 28.

Back anguish ended her career as a dancer; and things went down hill again; now she got into cocaine. “Again, I dreamed to die,” she remembers; “I just didn’t have the nerve to kill myself.” Instead, she attended her very first 12-step meeting in January, 1986. Within a week, no more liquor or drugs: she’s been clean and sober ever since.

She battled serious mental illness for the very first ten years of her sobriety but she refused to take medications. After nine years sober and with only grade eight education, she ultimately mustered up the courage to comeback to school, very first to Langara College, where she made the Dean’s List, then to UBC for Bachelor and Master’s degrees in Social Work, graduating in 2000. She also became a member of the Golden Key National Honour Society for academic excellence at UBC.

After graduating with her MSW, She began doing trauma therapy at an agency in the DTES and also began working in academia, as a lecturer and program developer/coordinator. In 2009, she obtained her PhD. from SFU, and at that time, opened a full-time private practice. Her Counseling practice concentrates on trauma recovery and residential school survivors and their families.

She has published scores of academic articles, introduced her research at numerous academic conferences, has held over twenty volunteer positions in a self help program, has served on the board of Vancouver Recovery Club, and was recently elected to the board of EMDR Canada.

On a private note, she met her biological father for the very first time in one thousand nine hundred ninety six and cared for him until he died in 2000.

Barbara Harris will receive her award at The Courage To Come Back Awards gala dinner on Thursday, May Five, two thousand sixteen at the Vancouver Convention Centre West. Tickets and information at couragetocomeback.ca

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Christy Campbell of North Vancouver is the two thousand sixteen Courage To Come Back Award recipient in the Physical Rehabilitation category.

CHRISTY CAMPBELL NAMED COURAGE TO COME BACK AWARD RECIPIENT

Photo credit: Mark van Manen /PNG

Christy Campbell, 41, of North Vancouver is the two thousand sixteen Courage To Come Back Award recipient in the Physical Rehabilitation category.

Christy had it all: active healthy life; loving fucking partner, rewarding career, blessed home, and superb friends. Then, in December, 2005, at the age of 31, she was devastated by a stroke. Incapable to walk or talk or read, Christy’s vocabulary was wiped out. She could not ask for help, type an email or say her own name. She lost every word but one and learned a fresh word “aphasia.” Aphasia is a communication disorder best described as being dropped into an alien land where you can’t speak the language and don’t understand a single letter of the alphabet.

Give up? Not a chance. The one word she had was “yes.” Christy was alive and with the support of her spouse and many friends and family took her life in an unexpected direction. At the time of her stroke, beyond short-term therapy BC’s medical system had very limited resources for people Christy age with her conditions, this despite the fact that fresh aphasia cases arise in Canada at about the same rate as cases of breast cancer.

Courageously, Christy determined that she would improve the resources available to brain injury survivors in BC. Six months after her stroke she could say twelve words. Intellect intact, she spent innumerable hours learning to dress and write with her left arm, learning to walk, learning to drive and learning to read again. She’d lost her career but not her will to contribute; she wants people with aphasia to have the treatment, resources and support they need.

In the years since her stroke, her vocabulary and confidence grew and she proceeds to overcome the isolation aphasia imposes. Christy inspired and co-founded the annual Sea-to-Sky Aphasia Camp, now coming in its seventh year. She established UBC’s Campbell-Purves Aphasia Education Fund and offers her time and energy as a volunteer to Providence Health Care, Columbia Speech and Language Services, the Stroke Recovery Association of BC and other organizations far and broad. She’s now a mother of an active four-year old who loves listening to her read bedtime stories.

Christy will receive her award at The Courage To Come Back Awards gala dinner on Thursday, May Five, two thousand sixteen at the Vancouver Convention Centre West. Tickets and information at couragetocomeback.ca

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Sonia Deol interviews Christy Campbell – observe live on Global News Hour at 6pm May 2nd

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Jemal Damtawe of Coquitlam, is the two thousand sixteen Courage To Come Back Award recipient in the Addiction category.

JEMAL DAMTAWE NAMED COURAGE TO COME BACK AWARD RECIPIENT

Photo credit: Jason Payne/PNG

At age fifteen in war-torn Ethiopia, he became a child soldier – at the point of a gun. His very first escape, stowed away on a cargo ship, left him swimming for his life with other boys, two of whom drowned. In 1986, still a teenager, he attempted again, reaching Canada in 1989, getting asylum, commencing a restaurant in Montreal, getting married, having a daughter.

But he couldn’t wiggle his trauma, undiagnosed PTSD. He self-medicated with drugs and alcohol, left his family, moved to Portland, OR, joined a gang and became a drug dealer.

The threat of death led him back to Canada – Vancouver – in 2005. The overdose death of a friend led him to Union Gospel Mission. Sheer will, recovery programs and the caring support of others led him to abandon drugs and get sober. He confronted his childhood trauma and vowed to help others kick the habit as he had. He became Reverend Jemal in June 2011.

On Christmas Day, two thousand fifteen Jemal Damtawe celebrated ten years of sobriety. He began working as a volunteer swamper at the UGM Thrift Store and is now a full-time Outreach Worker and Preacher at UGM. He rescues those fighting with addiction and homelessness in the Downtown East Side. He is mentor to dozens of dudes who have walked on the road away from addiction and back toward self-respect.

Jemal has married again, has a three year-old son, and has joyfully reconnected with his 23-year old daughter.

Jemal will receive his award at The Courage To Come Back Awards gala dinner on Thursday, May Five, two thousand sixteen at the Vancouver Convention Centre West. Tickets and information at couragetocomeback.ca

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Meredith Graham of Fresh Westminster is The Courage To Come Back Award Recipient in the Social Adversity category

MEREDITH GRAHAM NAMED COURAGE TO COME BACK AWARD RECIPIENT

by Gerald Haslam

Photo credit: Richard Lam/PNG

Meredith Graham, 27, of Fresh Westminster, is the two thousand sixteen Courage To Come Back Award recipient in the Social Adversity category.

Meredith’s childhood was influenced by her parents’ practices of poverty, food scarcity, violence, periods of mental illness, and substance use. Meredith – from age eight on – was compelled into the role of parent.

She was diagnosed with depression and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder at 13, bi-polar disorder at eighteen and borderline personality disorder at 26. She ran away from home as a teenage, couch-surfing with friends. In high school she used coping strategies that further put her health at risk, such as disordered eating.

At the point where she could have given up, or worse, Meredith was embraced by people who cared: teachers and vice-principals at Princess Margaret Secondary School in Surrey. At 15, she now had a safe place to live with no more three-hour daily bus rails. She had medications, individual and group counselling, with support from psychologists, social workers, and, later, group home workers, women from her church, and landlords.

Overcoming setbacks, she graduated from high school (and sang the national anthem at the convocation), finished the Performing Arts program at Capilano University, graduated with a diploma in Child and Youth Care Counselling from Douglas College and is now a student in the Bachelor of Child and Youth Care program.

She is a youth and family development worker at St. Leonard’s Youth and Family Services in Burnaby, and has also made significant volunteer contributions in the community. She initiated Peer Health Educators at Douglas College to instruct students about improving mental health and was active in the Douglas College Miles for Mental Health Run/Walk, has contributed training materials for the education of social workers and serves on two volunteer boards for the Vancouver Foundation. She’s open about her history, providing interviews, speeches, and sharing her poetry to concentrate attention on the issues illustrated by her own life and the need for resources to help others.

Meredith Graham will receive her award at The Courage To Come Back Awards gala dinner on Thursday, May Five, two thousand sixteen at the Vancouver Convention Centre West. Tickets and information at couragetocomeback.ca

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Tom Teranishi of Vancouver is the two thousand sixteen Courage To Come Back Award recipient in the Medical category

TOM TERANISHI NAMED COURAGE TO COME BACK AWARD RECIPIENT

by Gerald Haslam

Photo credit: Nick Procaylo/PNG

Tom was born in one thousand nine hundred forty two at a wartime internment camp for Japanese-Canadians. He had significant vision issues from birth, which later developed into retinopathy and macular degeneration, undergoing bilateral cataract and corneal transplant surgeries. Today he has about five per cent functional vision with light sensitivity.

There were early signs in his mid-teens and he began suffering from poor renal function by one thousand nine hundred seventy eight and was put under the care of a kidney specialist. In one thousand nine hundred eighty three he was put on hemo-dialysis and in one thousand nine hundred eighty four he was fortunate enough to receive a kidney transplant, which served him well for thirty years. Three years ago his kidney functions were decreasing so he was back on hemo-dialysis by two thousand fourteen followed by a 2nd transplant in 2015.

None of this stopped Tom from getting an education and pursuing a career. He received B.A. and Masters of Social Work degrees from UBC and began full-time work at Shaughnessy Hospital in 1968, helping war veterans and others needing rehabilitation and support. When the hospital closed in 1993, Tom transferred to VGH, where he worked in the physical rehab unit and continued training and supervising social work students and future doctors.

His deteriorating eyesight and other health issues coerced Tom to retire from hospital work in two thousand four and from his activity as a private practitioner in 2013, but none of that has prevented him from aiding a rich diversity of community organizations as a volunteer. It’s a long list embarking with Kits Neighbourhood House in his university days, then later goes on to include the Kinsmen Society, Lions Society, Nikkei Seniors Health Care and Housing Society, Metro Vancouver Cross-Cultural Seniors Network, and the Association for the Equality of Blind Canadians.

He has travelled widely, been a curler, bowler, hiker and cross-country skier. As his friends say of Tom, admiringly, there’s not much he won’t attempt.

Tom will receive his award at The Courage To Come Back Awards gala dinner on Thursday, May Five, two thousand sixteen at the Vancouver Convention Centre West. Tickets and information at couragetocomeback.ca

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Randene Neill interviews Tom Teranishi – observe live on Global News Hour at 6pm May 4th.

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Lessons in courage

by Gerald Haslam – founding member of Coast Mental Health Foundation, author, past member of The Courage To Come Back Executive Committee

‘Intrepid Pilgrim – Lorne Kimber’ by Grace Sunburn

My involvement with Courage began on a rainy fall day in 1998. Hugh Mitchell, a stockbroker and friend I’d done business with since the early 80s, reached me by phone. “I’ve found something truly fascinating, something you couldn’t turn down in a month of Sundays,” said he.

That piqued my interest: whatever could he be talking about and how could he be so sure I’d want to be involved? “It’s called the Courage to Come Back Awards. It embarked in Pittsburgh; a local organization called the Coast Foundation wants to embark it here.”

So? I’d never heard of the Coast Foundation (now Coast Mental Health), had no idea what these awards might be about. I must have sounded skeptical, to put it gently.

“Just come to one meeting,” Hugh insisted; “see what happens.”

What to do? When someone you trust asks you to do a little something – go to one meeting, nothing more – you repay that trust by telling yes. So I went to the meeting, met Darrell Burnham (then Executive Director of Coast, now CEO) and Shirley Broadfoot (very first Courage Chair), and other volunteers, heard what they wished to do, bounced ideas back and forward, made some suggestions and came away totally persuaded that this Courage thing was a wonderful idea that could and would switch lives for the better. That meeting began a relationship which has lasted, one way or another, ever since.

For the best part of ten years I was chair of what we called “the vast and powerful media committee” (which had all of two members). I wrote virtually every press release announcing the names of recipients. I met virtually all of them. I went to scores of meetings in the Coast basement on East 11th Avenue. I wrote a book about Courage recipients and nominees called Heroes Next Door. I got to know a number of those folks very well. I came to regard them all as a kind of extended family. For months every year I was consumed by the Courage event. I observed it grow from its rather ragged beginnings into the significant project and life-changing practice it has become.

But did it truly affect me, switch me, as a person? Yes, no question. Let me tell you how, abbreviated version, give you some of the lessons this practice imparted to this one individual. I want to do that by using the best example I can think of, the Courage recipient I got to know best, a hero named Lorne Joseph James Kimber. Born in Saskatoon June Three, 1948; died in Vancouver April 22, 2008.

“I am not a poor disabled person,” he liked to say; “I am, very first, a person, and 2nd, I have a disability.” For all the years I knew him, Lorne, who suffered from numerous sclerosis, never walked, never washed himself or dressed himself or brushed his own teeth. His capability to speak declined steadily. But he lived a fuller life than most of us: he was a blazing beacon for people with disabilities, a champ not only for himself but for others as well. He was a mentor and a role model. He was courageous and raunchy and stubborn and cheerful and he had an impish sense of humour.

I very first met Lorne in his room at George Pearson Centre, a long-term care facility in Vancouver. He was the recipient in the General Medicine category in the very first year of the Courage to Come Back Awards, recognized for his years of successful advocacy for people with disabilities. He was a pioneer in the thrust for wheelchair accessibility and the initiator behind what he fondly described as Canada’s very first wheelchair-accessible taxi fleet (Kimber Cabs, going strong since 1989).

That very first time, I was drafting a press release announcing his award. “I may have MS,” it quoted Lorne as telling, “but MS doesn’t have me.” I read the line to him and he said, “Can I add something?” Yes, of course. “MS doesn’t have me,” he went on; “Jesus does.”

Lorne believed God gave him severe challenges because he was destined to inspire others. He believed in Heaven and knew to a moral certainty that when the Lord called him home, as he put it, he’d be reunited with Angela, the beloved wifey he lost to cancer in 1987. We who spotted him often figured his next bout of pneumonia – by two thousand eight he’d had survived a dozen or more of them – might well be the last. But that wasn’t how he went, passing on instead peacefully, in his sleep, to be sprightly and joyful again.

He trained me so much more than he realized at the time, about life’s challenges and how to confront them, about optimism and courage, about never providing up. His faith was real, his smile infectious. He trained me that the true measurement of your value is how much you help others.

Lorne Kimber was my friend; if he could face life as he did, the rest of us, with less daunting prospects, can surely do almost as well.

Nominate someone – reading how my friends feel about me was mind sucking

Wendy St. Marie, two thousand fifteen Courage To Come Back Award Recipient – Speech, Courage Launch, January 6, 2016

Arlen Redekop / PNG photo

I want to tell you how being nominated and going through the process has affected me and to ENCOURAGE others to nominate.

I had the very fine honour of being the recipient of last year’s Courage To Come Back Award in the medical category.

When my friend told me that she would like to nominate me for this award I said sure. I didn’t think that there was a chance in the world that I would be a recipient of any award.

Having said that, I appreciated the intent. She asked permission to contact other friends, one of which was my oldest friend. We have known each other since we were four year old. In other words my history was validated.

I was so positive I wasn’t going to even be considered that I purposely did not look at the website or any information on the Awards or Coast Mental Health.

This is why I am here today. I want to tell you how being nominated and going through the process has affected me and to ENCOURAGE others to nominate.

All nominees must sign the nomination form In order for it to be submitted. Upon reading it I was instantly dazed by what my friends wrote about me. Regardless if I had never heard again from Coast Mental Health, to have in writing how my friends feel about me was mind throating and that was MORE than enough. I will hold all of those words close to me forever.

I didn’t think about the awards again until I received a call from Lorne Segal. After his introduction , Lorne spoke of the history and the value of these awards and the selection criteria. I continued to listen thinking this man does a good “Decline”. I had been in the position of delivering bad news to staff before. Then he ultimately Congratulated me for being the recipient in the Medical category!

From there it was a tornado of Press and Media, and meeting the other nominees.

This practice ranks as my most arousing and memorable. I look at my beautiful award on my mantle every day. I have gained more confidence in my abilities and I recently finished my training to be an Ambassador for the M S Society of B.C.

I am sultry about these Courage Awards.

Please take the time to nominate someone. It is a brief time out of your life to take the time to nominate. There are so many worthy people in Vancouver. You can switch someone’s life!

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