Taking time to celebrate our community

What do the Junction Creek Stewardship Committee, Olympian Alex Baumann, and educator Ernie Checkeris have in common? They, and a few dozen others who hail from our fair city, are recipients of a Community Builders Award of Excellence.

This award, which was first given out in 2004, celebrates the tremendous contributions of people and organizations in this dynamic community we call home. It is an awards program supported by a strong fabric of corporate sponsorship, and a network of community leaders who help decide who or what organization will be named the next “community builder of the year.”

Quite appropriately, Northern Life — Greater Sudbury’s community newspaper — hosts this program. And this year, after all the ups and downs we’ve seen while reporting on the incredible news coming from our city, we are ready to celebrate the people and groups who help make our community such a wonderful place in which to live.

If there ever was a year when we need to give one another a boost, this would be the year. Think of what we have been struggling through: an economic slump, a major strike, political cacophony, increasing poverty and homelessness, and the list goes on.

But true community builders — like the ones who receive these awards, year after year — don’t let depressing statistics and negative headlines deplete the power they have to affect positive change.

Take last year’s Community Builder Award winner for health care, Homer Seguin. As stated in one of the retired Inco worker’s biographies, “battles waged by Seguin, and other union leaders, on behalf of mine workers in the last 50 years have resulted in workplace health and safety measures all Canadians take for granted today.”

Seguin played a leadership role in an awareness campaign that led to a Royal Commission on Mining Safety. That led to Ontario workers having the right to know about workplace hazards and being allowed to refuse unsafe work.

According to Leo Gerard, International president of the United Steelworkers, “Seguin has never stopped fighting for safety on the job and for a clean environment. No person in Canada has done more for workers on these issues.”

Consider also the 2005 Community Builder Award winner for the arts, Denise Vitali.

The dance teacher and community activist “holds a deep-seated commitment to her tight-knit body of students and, though there is not much opportunity for a dance career in Sudbury (whether for art or entertainment), she has helped to make this city a fertile training ground for students of all ages,” states the biography that accompanied her award.

“A talented dancer, she has shared her knowledge and passion with young people for more than two decades at the Sudbury School of Dance. But her true gift is her ability to bend and stretch students into independent, confident adults.”

After spending some time on the Community Builders Awards website (www.cbawards.ca), reviewing some of the stories about the people who have helped build our community to be the dynamic city it is today, I am reminded how, at the end of the day, it is not money or corporate prowess that makes a community strong. It is people like Jim Gordon, Tom Davies, Maureen Lacroix, Dr. David Pearson — to name just a few of our award winners — who have followed their passions in their community, and have tirelessly given of themselves to help build up the tremendous quality of life we have here in Greater Sudbury.

On Feb. 18, we will celebrate the latest group of people to receive a Community Builders Award of Excellence.

It is an event filled with great food, inspiring conversation and camaraderie. Northern Life will bring you the uplifting stories, pictures and video that spring forth from this annual event.

But if you want to join us in the celebration, you are more than welcome. Phone 673-5667 for tickets.

Wendy Bird is managing editor of Northern Life.