Sometimes historic headlines end up as nothing more than footnotes buried in the past.

The 25th anniversary of the first female premier in Canada is a reminder that not long ago there were no women leaders in this country at all. With only 11 female premiers and one prime minister ever, it’s also a reminder of how little representation there is at the top.

“We still have disproportionately fewer women in elected political offices across the country at all levels of government, than we should,” said Margot Young, a law professor at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on social justice and equality. “And there is still discriminatory reporting and analyzing of those women in those positions in power.”

On April 2, 1991, Rita Johnston took over as the first female premier in British Columbia. She was the first female leader at the provincial or federal level in Canada.

The media barely paid attention to her break through the political leadership glass ceiling. National newspapers and international wire services gave it no more than a line or two of recognition.

women in politics. The first female premier of a territory took over later in 1991 and in 1993, PEI got its first female premier. Then Kim Campbell became Prime Minster.

Johnston’s role seems more of a blip in retrospect. Despite making up slightly more than 50 per cent of the Canadian population, there wasn’t another woman in a leadership role until 2000.

Why didn’t Johnston usher in a new era of female political leadership in Canada?

“Rita Johnston wasn’t seen as someone who was supporting women in particular,” said Jill Vickers, a political science professor at Carleton University.

“She wasn’t someone who had any kind of feminist profile.”

Not a feminist, and perhaps she didn’t see herself as doing anything out of the ordinary.

She was a wife, mother and grandmother when she became premier. She’d also been a hard-working businesswoman, running a trailer park and managing a finance company before entering politics.

The idea that women haven’t historically been wives, mothers and workers outside of the home is a myth, or at least a generalization. Blue collar and working class women have worked as long as there have been factories and shops to work in. Providing income was a way of taking care of the family, much like it is now.

What pushes Johnston’s accomplishment a step beyond this was her position as a leader. Further, she was chosen as for that role by her fellow members of the Social Credit party.

Part of the problem in giving her a place in the history books is that scandal overshadowed her term. The reason the premiership was available is that William Vander Zalm, the former provincial leader, resigned due to serious conflicts of interest. News articles covering her leadership focused more on her association with the disgraced Vander Zalm than her role as female trailblazer.

Yet she was the first and her role may have helped to cement the idea of women leaders in the minds of Canadians at some level.

“The presence of any new category of people in politics has an impact, there’s no doubt about that,” said Vickers.

It’s been 25 years and Canadian provincial and federal governments still fall short of representing gender distribution in this country. Yes, Justin Trudeau instituted gender parity in his Cabinet and there are more women in leadership positions in provincial and federal Canadian politics than there were in 1991. But not many more.

If Rita Johnston began anything in becoming the first female premier, it was helping to get Canadians used to the idea of seeing women leading at a higher level. Now it’s time to see women in power move beyond the headlines and the endnotes, and let them star in the history books.

All of my newspaper articles were found using LexisNexis, through Carleton University library database access:

The Wall Street Journal was a very brief hits that noted Rita Johnston as the first female premier. It was helpful in demonstrating how little fanfare was given to this event.

The Globe and Mail article demonstrated that even when longer articles were written on the occasion of Johnston becoming premier, they focused more on the Vander Zalm conflict of interest resignation.

The Financial Post article demonstrated that articles written about her didn’t even necessarily address that she was the first female premier. It seemed to be a non-event.

The information for the timelines was obtained using Wikipedia. It corroborates with information found from other sources but synthesizes the format to create a consistent visualization. It was helpful to see all of the female leaders in one place, with the dates they were in power over the past 25 years. It helped contextualize how little the impact Rita Johnston and the other female first ministers have had on the political landscape.

Police continue to hunt down new tips.

The name Michael Dunahee is etched in the mind of anyone who lived in Victoria at the time of his disappearance.

Twenty-five years ago this month, four-year-old Michael was abducted from a playground in the quiet Victoria neighbourhood of Esquimalt, while his mother, Crystal Dunahee, played touch football just yards away.

“It was an ordinary day. No different than any other,” says Crystal. “Michael asked if he could go to the park just beside, and I said yes.”

“I told him to wait for his dad, and not to go anywhere,” she says, adding that Michael knew not to speak with strangers.

The field where Crystal played football each weekend was less than 100 yards from the playground. According to Crystal, police believe Michael never made it that far.

“We think he was abducted in the parking lot,” she says, noting that the playground couldn’t have been more than 75 yards from where they parked their van.

Crystal and her Husband Bruce Dunahee say they’ll never forget the terror of searching for their son, or realizing his disappearance was more than just a child who walked away from a playground.

Yet, as difficult as it was, they realized then that they needed to remain strong, and allow police to conduct their investigation.

“We had another child at home, a daughter, that we needed to take care of,” says Crystal. “She needed us, and that was important.”

The investigation

Retired Insp. Det. Fred Mills of the Victoria Police Department was responsible for the initial investigation.

Still haunted by the case, Mills wonders if there’s anything he might have missed, anything he overlooked.

“It’s something you always ask yourself,” says Mills. “But you do the best you can with the knowledge you have, and eventually you need to move on.”

In addition to standard investigative practices, Mills deployed a team of officers to Quantico, Va to consult the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit – a first for Victoria police.

Disheartening as it was for Mills not find answers to Michael’s disappearance, he sees the passing of the investigation from one detective to the next as a positive development. He also recognizes the importance of keeping Michael’s story alive and in the public eye.

“You could have a breakthrough tomorrow,” says Mills. “Every time an anniversary comes up and it’s out there in the media they get more tips.”

Michael in 1991, left. Age-enhanced depiction of what Michael might have looked like in 2012, right. www.michaeldunahee.ca

Still hunting

As with all unsolved cases involving missing children, Michael’s case remains an open investigation.

Const. Keith Lindner, now responsible for Michael’s file, says police continue to investigate new leads, and that he remains in close contact with Michael’s family.

He also stresses the significance of Michael’s disappearance to the community.

“You say the name Dunahee, and everyone knows,” says Lindner. “I’m in my 30th year and it’s hands down the most emotional file I’ve ever been involved in.”

Michael’s disappearance reverberates well beyond Victoria. News of his abduction was broadcast across North America on major news networks and on programs such as America’s Most Wanted.

“I’ve heard people describe it as a loss of innocence,” says Lindner. “And I’ve yet to come up with a better description than that.”

Today, investigators use social media, Amber alerts and age-enhanced photography to solve crimes. Though none of these tools existed at the time of Michael’s disappearance, they are now being used to spread awareness of Michael’s case in the hope that someone, somewhere, knows something.

“Unfortunately, we don’t know what happened to Michael,” says Lindner. “But what I can tell you is that we’re not going to give up.”

The CBC’s Jean Paetkau has produced an excellent radio documentary including the voices of Crystal Dunahee and retired Insp. Det. Fred Mills. To listen, click here.

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By Rupert Nuttle

He was 26 years old in December 1990, a recent graduate of the Royal Military College, when he was shipped from Cold Lake, Alberta to Doha, Qatar. Now in his fifties, retired Captain Sean Bruyea has struggled for two and a half decades with Gulf War syndrome.

He’s not alone. The illness has affected hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans worldwide, but still goes unrecognized by the Canadian government.

“They’re still highly dismissive of it,” says Bruyea, who speaks regularly before Parliamentary Committees on Veterans Affairs, and has published more than 30 articles promoting the welfare of disabled soldiers and veterans.

“It’s really just a tragic, sad litany of bureaucratic and government failures over the years,” he says, adding that the government’s response has been “completely ineffectual and insensitive.”

About 4,500 Canadians were deployed to the Middle East between 1990 and 1991 in the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq. Some started coming forward in the mid-1990s, complaining of chronic fatigue, joint and muscle pain, and lapses in memory and concentration, among other physical and psychological symptoms.

The causes are thought to be exposure to environmental toxins – such as oil-well gas fires, pesticides and depleted uranium – as well as a host of military-issued vaccines and medications that were administered to soldiers at the time of deployment.

A recent report from the American Institute of Medicine confirms that as many as one in three veterans deployed to the Persian Gulf theatre are still plagued by the multi-symptom illness today. In Canada, the medical research has been less conclusive. A government report from 2005 suggests that the illness “cannot be linked to an identifiable cause,” and goes on to mention that the same symptoms are also found among civilians and non-deployed military personnel.

When asked to comment for this article, Veterans Affairs wrote in an email: “Gulf War Veterans are covered for any disability that arose during their service in this theatre.” According to Bruyea, it isn’t enough – those who suffer from Gulf War syndrome have had to seek treatment at their own expense, and still do. (The Department of National Defense did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)

Part of the problem around the government’s response has to do with the complexity of the illness, suggests Dr. Gordon Broderick, a medical researcher at Nova Southeastern University who has published numerous papers on the syndrome.

He says the thinking has changed over the years. While initially the culprit was thought to be the depleted uranium used in munitions, Broderick says the focus has shifted to the effects of government-issued medications on soldiers’ immune systems. The combination of powerful vaccines and combat stress could have made troops more vulnerable to allergens and disease, he explains.

As Bruyea tells it, “We were basically guinea pigs.” He remembers being lined up and administered with a whole slew of vaccines within the space of a day, before being loaded into Hercules aircraft and flown to the middle of the desert. Upon arrival, troops were ordered to take pyridostigmine bromide, a powerful anti-nerve gas agent, every eight hours.

And on top of the toxins and the cocktail of medications, he says the stress was “gut-wrenching.” “We were fully expecting biological and chemical weapons,” says Bruyea, “And we fully expected that people would die.” After twelve weeks, he was diagnosed with Combat Stress Reaction (an acute form of PTSD), and sent home.

There may have been no Canadian casualties in the Gulf War, but the health effects of that conflict will stick with Bruyea and many others for a lifetime.

GulfWar-Nuttle-Documentation

The trickle of Syrian refugees into Ottawa stirs memories for the Somali Centre for Family Services.

Twenty-five years ago, Somalis, in contrast, poured into Canada’s capital, fleeing a civil war that was devastating their country.

“Every given month, we had a few hundred Somalis coming into town,” said Farah Aw-Osman, one of the founders of the Somali Centre for Family Services.

Many of them were women with children. Some had lost their husbands to the war. Others had fled on the directive of husbands who stayed home to fight. These women had travelled across the world with nothing.

Individuals within an already existing Somali community in Ottawa were inundated with calls for help from just-arriving refugees. And so they sprung into action, helping the newcomers find housing, learn the language, register children at schools and build homes in the new country, all at no charge.

One evening in May 1991, these Somali-Canadians met at the Ottawa Mosque to turn their individual efforts into an organization they called the Somali Canadian Cultural Association.

“At the beginning, we struggled,” said Aw-Osman, one of the 12 people who was at the May 1991 meeting.

With a $20 monthly donation from each of 50 members of the Somali community, the association rented an office that was just a little bigger than a cubicle. All the services it offered were run by volunteers.

“Back then the unity of the community was very strong,” Aw-Osman said. “They [refugees] knew if they had any issues, this is the organization to come to.”

Less then four years after its creation, the centre changed its name to the Somali Centre for Family Services to reflect the range of services it wanted to provide; helping different age groups within the immigrant community to integrate into Canada. And so it included programs for youth and seniors.

After receiving its first grant of $25000 in 1993, the centre set a motion to expand. It now receives funding from the all levels of government and from various foundations within Ontario.

“We’ve become a hub for most of the immigrant community in the city of Ottawa,” said Abdirazak Karod, the executive director of the centre.

More than 20 people work at the Somali Centre for Family Services helping to settle newcomers into Ottawa, still at no charge. The centre has hired members of other ethnic groups within the immigrant community to help newcomers from more diverse backgrounds.

“The best person who can provide service and become successful at integration is someone who can understand your language and your culture,” Karod said.

The centre is now planning to hire Syrians who can provide services that Syrian refugees need to settle.

“You can tell they are a powerful organization within the Somali community and beyond,” said Valerie Assoi, a community developer working with the centre on a crime prevention project in Ottawa.

However, Assoi said members of the Somali community who are already settled don’t feel comfortable using the centre. These Somalis worry about sharing private information at a centre where they are well known and so they seek other alternatives.

But Assoi said the centre’s programs for youth and newcomers have been consistent, with many participating in them.

The centre says that more than 6,500 people use its services every year.

“They’re sensitive to the culture of the communities they are serving and can address specific needs of the Somali community,” said Luisa Veronis, a professor at the University of Ottawa who has worked with settlement agencies in Ottawa.

Although it’s could be challenging to serve more than one community at a time, Veronis said the experience encourages the coexistence of different cultures.

_______________

Documentation

1. http://www.scfsottawa.org

This is the center’s present website. It contains background information about the center, the services it offers as well as contact information. I found it while browsing Factiva for story ideas. It was through the website that I realized the center was registered 25 years ago. It provided useful information for part of the story’s background. It was also through the website that I was able to reach the center and its staff for comment and interviews

2. http://www.scfsottawa.org/pdf/ann-report-2013-14.pdf

This is the center’s annual report from 2013. It provides more detail about the services offered by the centre. I got it through a google search. I was looking for a more recent one than the version on their website and this appears to be the most recent report available. It also provides relevant numbers about the number of people who use the center.

Ed Zaluski, a soft-spoken man in his seventies would not be someone you would expect to have recently achieved one of the highest lifetime achievements in one of the most intense games in the world.

However the game of bridge is not one that requires physical prowess. Rather it is a game of great intellect, perception, patience and intuition, all of which Zaluski has in spades.
“This takes a long time to learn to play well,” says Zaluski, with a serious look that gives off an aura of poker, or rather bridge-face. “It is absolutely the most difficult game in the world.”
Zaluski has been playing bridge for decades. Just this October he achieved the title of Grand Life Master, the highest rank any player can reach within the American Contract Bridge League points system, which also applies in Canada.
The title of Grand Life Master is achieved by competing in the most elite bridge games in North America, something Zaluski is familiar with. Zaluski was part of the first bridge team from Ottawa to qualify for the World Bridge Federation’s championship tournament, 25 years ago.
“It was tough” Zaluski says of the competition at the world championships, “there were a lot of pros,” playing in the tournament, while Zaluski’s team comprised of amateur players. The team also consisted of the late Doug Heron, John Valliant, David Willis, as well as two partners from New Brunswick, Randy Bennet and the late Michael Betts.
While the team in 1991 did not qualify for the finals of that tournament, Ottawa has since become a hub for competitive bridge players. “Ottawa is a strong city for Bridge,” Zaluski says, “We have a lot of good players.”
Zaluski’s son, John also plays bridge competitively, and agrees with his father, “the Ottawa bridge community is actually quite strong, when compared to across Canada.” John says that typically only Toronto and Montreal are as competitive as Ottawa.

Several players form Ottawa have been able to turn professional, some of which Zlauski himself has mentored. Multiple winners of the Canadian Championships, such as Isabelle Brisebois and the young up and comer David Sabourin, have at one point been overseen by Zaluski.

However, his most meaningful mentee is his son John, who was able to play professionally for five years. John says that bridge has been a significant factor in his relationship with his father. “If we didn’t have bridge we not might have much in common to talk about really,” John says with a laugh.

The father son duo also compiled a roughly 300 page strategy book together, which speaks to the great attention both of them pay to the game. “We both treat it almost as a profession,” John says, ‘if you’re going to compete at that level you almost have to be a full-time player.”

While John was able to become a professional player, Zaluski himself did not have much interest in getting paid to play. “It’s a lot of pressure to win when you are paid to play,” says Zaluski, who prefers to play for fun.

That does not mean he shied away from intense competition. He has continued to compete at the national and international level, including a trip to the 2008 world championships in the senior division, where his team finished in the top 8.

However, since gaining the title of Grand Life Master last fall, Zaluski has little interest in travelling to compete. He says, “I got all the bridge I need here in town,” as he reflects upon the bridge community he had a hand in building.

1)Above is a picture of Zaluski’s winning team in Mexico, where they played to qualify for the World Championships.

2)Ed Zaluski provided the picture to me.

3)The photo is helpful because it shows the team, but is also a visual representation of the time that has passed since 1991.

Link to original story from 1991:

http://search.proquest.com.proxy.library.carleton.ca/canadiannews/docview/239549054/fulltext/94CCE271C8FC4A2CPQ/58?accountid=9894

1) This is an electronic copy of the original story about the bridge team, printed in the Ottawa Citizen in 1991.

2)I obtained it through a Canadian Newstand Complete search.

3) This document inspired me to seek out this story. It also gives some context to the team’s qualifying match in Mexico City, and provides the names of the team members.

A quarter of a century ago, doomsday reports about acid rain led to the signing of the Canada-United-States Air Quality Agreement. But today, climate change is the big storm on the horizon, and the once terrifying clouds of sulphur have floated away from public concern.

In the late 1970s, Canadian researchers and environmentalists connected the chemicals produced by coal burning plants and metal smelters, mainly sulphur dioxide, to acid rain that was poisoning forests, lakes and the fish that lived in them in northeastern North America.

Although Canada had the largest nickel smelter in North America, it was mainly the United States’ coal plants that were damaging Canada’s ecosystems. Because of the wind direction, American pollution produced 50 per cent of the acid rain in Canada, but only 10 per cent of the acid rain that fell over the United States came from Canadian pollutants.

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, once dubbed Canada’s greenest prime minister, set out to convince Americans that something needed to be done.

“Reagan was going to veto anything that came up on acid rain,” said Leslie Alm, a professor in environmental policy at Boise State University. He added that the president and other American powers that be were more worried about the economies of coal plants and the auto industry than the lakes and trees in Ontario.

“There was not going to be any air quality accord between U.S. and Canada until the United States had developed their own acid rain policy,” said Alm, who wrote his PhD dissertation on acid rain in the 80s, and continued his research on the international issues surrounding acid rain well into the 90s.

Alm said that although Canadians were actively lobbying for acid rain policies in the U.S., the Reagan administration refused to move forward blaming lack of concrete research on the subject.

But as years went on, overwhelming scientific evidence led to a consensus on the dangers of acid rain, and in 1990, the American Clean Air Act was implemented. Newly elected George Bush Sr. promised to take swift action on the acid rain issue, signing the Air Quality Agreement with Mulroney in 1991.

Since 1991, both countries have released a progress report every two years to track acid rain pollutants in both Canada and America.

Their latest report, in 2012, stated an almost 60 per cent decrease in sulphur emissions in Canada since 1990, and a 79 per cent decrease in the U.S. during the same time frame.

According to Barbara Harvey, a spokesperson for Environment Canada, the agreement has been a success in both international and environmental policy.

“The Air Quality Agreement has enabled the two countries to work collaboratively to address transboundary air quality issues,” said Harvey. “This collaboration has fostered enhanced scientific cooperation to support the development of environmental policies.”

Don Munton, an expert on acid rain policy and a former professor in International Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia, advised to take these reports, and the partnership between Canada and the United States, with a grain of salt.

“Canada couldn’t solve it’s own problem,” said Munton. “We needed the United States to act, and the United States decided to act for it’s own reasons. The agreement itself was pretty well an afterthought.”

“It’s the agreement that, past tense, ‘dealt’ with acid rain. The emissions are still there that produce a lot of acid rain,” said Munton. He believes that both countries have fell into a habit of overstating their progress.

Nitrogen oxides, a chemical emitted from car exhaust, was included in the agreement, but deemphasized to protect the auto industry, according to Munton.

Harvey also mentioned that between 2012 and 2000, the level of nitrogen oxides has been reduced by approximately 45 per cent in both countries. But according to the Environment Canada website, in 2013, there was only been a 28 per cent total decrease in nitrogen oxides from 1990.

But Munton is hopeful for the future; he says new fears might be the remedy to old environmental wounds.

“Shutting down coal plants in the United States in order to reduce carbon emissions will simultaneously reduce sulphur dioxide emissions. The battle against greenhouse gases will solve the rest of the acid rain problem.”

Documents

Leslie Alm Journal Article:

Don Munton Journal Article: