Shelagh
Rogers named Officer of Order of Canada
She co-hosted the 2005 Gung Haggis Fat Choy Dinner and we are creating a Gung Haggis Fat Choy Pow Wow to celebrate Scottish and Chinese pioneer cultures with First Nations
“For her contributions as a promoter of Canadian culture, and for her volunteer work in the fields of mental health and literacy.”
Here is the Governor General's website with the full list of appointments.
http://www.gg.ca/document.aspx?id=13995&lan=eng
Also great that some local BCers were also appointed. I have met a few of them. Martha Lou Henley receives the Order
of Canada for her Philanthropy work, recently I saw her at the Leslie Uyeda
concert at Nikkei Place this fall. I met Trevor Linden in July at the
BC Hockey Hall of Fame Dinner when I was part of the Larry Kwong pioneer award cheering group – Trevor graciously came over to give congratulations to Larry – the first Asian-Canadian to play in the NHL. Dr. Bob Hare came to one of my
psychology classes as a guest prof. Eric Peterson lives in Ontario, but he was a co-writer with BCer John McLachlan Gray for the immortal iconic theatre work “Billy Bishop Goes to War” as well as recently playing the curmudgeon father “Oscar” in Corner Gas to BCer Brent Butt's “Brent Leroy”
In October 2009, Shelagh Rogers came to Kogawa House and brought CBC writer Paolo Pietropaolo and author Richard Van Camp of the West Coast Aboriginal
Writers Collective to share conversation with Japanese Canadians and First Nations members of the community. We are working on planning another event @ Kogawa House, possibly for February, that will again bring First Nations together with Japanese Canadian issues.
Shelagh and I now are planning to create a
Gung Haggis Fat Choy Pow Wow Dinner to bring together Scottish, Chinese
and First Nations pioneer heritage in one dinner!
In May 2009, Shelagh helped to host an event with with our inaugural writer in residence at Kogawa House – John Asfour. Special guests were authors Anne Eriksen and Gary Geddes. Gary is an old friend of John's and was one of the first people John called to do a reading at Kogawa House. I already knew that Gary's poetry collection “Falsework” about the building and collapse of the Iron Workers' Memorial Bridge, was one of Shelagh's favorite books of 2008… so it was a natural to invite her to participate.
Here is the Globe & Mail story about the 56 Order of Canada recpients: