Yk residents honoured with Order of NWT
Recipients include former politician, Truth and Reconciliation Commission chair and nurse
John McFadden
Northern News Services
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A former politician, tireless nurse, Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner and a former premier are set to be inducted into the Order of the NWT.
Three of the four - Marie Wilson, Jan Stirling and Anthony Whitford - are Yellowknife residents. Former premier Nellie Cournoyea is based in Inuvik.
Anthony Whitford
Anthony W.J. Whitford, better known as Tony, said he is honoured and humbled to have been chosen. The former MLA and commissioner of the NWT said he will be proud to accept the award but added he will do so on behalf of the many people - too many to name, he said - who helped him along the way.
"There are so many people who were instrumental in me doing all the nice things that I was able to do that I am being recognized for. It feels like I was selected out of the herd. I'll accept it on their behalf," Whitford said.
He served three terms as MLA for Kam Lake. The proud Metis was born in Fort Smith, is a residential school survivor and just recently celebrated his 75th birthday.
The former politician was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 2010 and went through several rounds of radiation and chemotherapy. He said he has essentially been cancer-free since 2013.
"If I was going to go I was going to go down fighting. I'm slowly regaining that joie de vivre. My pace is a little slower but the heart is still strong," he said.
Jan Stirling
Order recipient Jan Stirling was unable to meet with Yellowknifer for an interview.
Her daughter, Lynn Stirling, said her mother and the family are very proud to receive the honour.
"She was a compassionate nurse and a compassionate person evidenced by her countless hours of volunteer work. She worked hard in the North as a public health nurse and she is well-deserving of this," said Lynn. "She was nursing in the 1950s when nurses did it all. They not only looked after the patients ... they emptied the garbage and they did whatever they had to do. Even though they worked all day they could be called out in the middle of the night to get ready for a medevac and they were expected to work the next day.
Jan Stirling, an 88-year-old mother of four, was born in England but raised in Canada.
"She met my father in Japan during the Korean War when they were both with the Canadian military," Lynn said.
Stirling is also well-known for her work in helping to make life easier for immigrants who chose to settle North of 60. For decades, she welcomed families into her home, starting in 1980 when Vietnamese immigrants first came to Yellowknife. She received a national citation for her work with newcomers to Canada in 2000.
The public health building downtown was re-named for her in 1997.
Marie Wilson
Like the other NWT recipients from Yellowknife, Marie Wilson has an extensive body of work.
She mused she is likely being recognized for her work in media and as a commissioner for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
"It's extraordinary. It feels surprising because I had no idea it was in the works," Wilson said.
"It's an incredible tribute to all the residential school survivors because they are the ones that created the platform for this last round of work that I had the honour of leading."
Wilson said she feels she is also being recognized for her work at the CBC where she started in the late 1970s in Yellowknife. She began her work in television when Northern television production was just beginning.
Wilson retired from the CBC in 2000 when her husband Stephen Kakfwi become premier because she said the optics were problematic. She then worked to create a national symposium to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the release of justice Tom Berger's report into the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline.
After that, she became the vice-president of operations for the Workers Compensation Board of NWT and Nunavut, a position she held for six years.
She then retired from that position in become a commissioner for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 2009 to 2015. For the past five months Wilson has been a professor at McGill University in Montreal where she teaches a course on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Wilson has three children and four grandchildren.
Ceremony today
The fourth recipient of the Order is former premier Nellie Cournoyea.
The ceremony which is open to the public and begins at the legislative assembly at 11:30 a.m.
The Order of the NWT is the highest honour given by the territorial government.
