Saturday 1 July 2017



Special Athlete Track Meet - YEAR 30! 
June 21,  2017!!!! 

Thanks to everyone that participated and helped to run this event for 30 years and for always making it a fabulous day! 

This year we had 350 athletes from 50 schools participate at Garth Webb High School. 

We started with 12 athletes in 1988 when parent Linda Leppek and Physical Education Consultant, Sue Amos started the event 30 years ago.

I was taking adapted Physical Education for my Phys. Ed. Specialist at the University of Toronto that year and joined them that summer when I phoned Sue Amos and said I had an idea. We had incredible chemistry in putting this together for the first few years.  The rest is history.

Thanks to the Special Education Department for years of support. Especially the support I received in the early years, in 1998 to 2008 with Special Education Coordinator Deb Wood and Superintendent Brenda Kearney.  Special mention to Susan Pritchard for her collaborative leadership and amazing secretarial staff through the previous 8 years: Hilary Francey, Mary-Jane Ritchie, Carol Ahern, and Carol Jack.

Thanks to a very supportive SEAC. They were always there supporting athletes.

Thanks to very supportive Education Directors, Superintendents and Trustees through all these years.

Thanks to incredible Educational Assistants and Educational Support Workers who supported their athletes and cheered them on.

Thanks especially  to my team of  Field Marshalls: Corinne Stratford, Leslie Davis , Barry Koepke and Alison McGurk Pabst, for the amazing job of running this event for decades.   Through the years they brought students officials from a variety of schools, who ran the events with incredible enthusiasm and leadership.

Thanks to Steve Morrison for taking over at the mike and for announcing with enthusiasm and to Shelley Gauthier for running Boccia for the last few years.

Watch an outstanding synopsis of the day on this great short video by our board media specialist, Jason Misner.

https://youtu.be/MssK_CZLvq4

Also posted to the Special Education Tab


Truth and Reconciliation 

July 1st, 2017 - A special day for important conversations.

We have a lot of work to do on this action plan.

As we move past the celebrations of Canada's 150th Birthday, we must look at the diverse issues and problems we face and understand the different stake holders and their points of view. Part of our national family is hurting, and no wonder when we look at the history of how our First Nations people were treated...and how they are still treated. It's had a huge inter-generational impact and severe consequences. 

Our own Chancellor, Shirley Cheechoo at Brock University is a First Nations woman and film maker. Her personal story of assimilation and her life in residential settings is heart wrenching. She survived totally inhumane conditions that no human should have been subjected too.

This short clip is worth watching to help us all understand the issues at hand and to help everyone to start thinking about, how in our sphere of influence, we can make a positive difference. It's been swept under the rug long enough but we are taking steps in the right direction with the Truth and Reconciliation Calls For Action.

It's time for improved understanding of the issues and time for action.

What can you do?
Share the video and start the conversation and your ideas.

Maclean's added a new video: Why some Indigenous people are calling out Canada 150.

Also posted to the First Nations Tab above .