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Canadians Who Took Their Time

JAMES ORBINSKI

If you choose to work hard and make the lives of others slightly better, then you’ll find your life will be more stimulating, interesting, and meaningful.

At seventeen, James Orbinski was your average confused, adventure-seeking teen. He twice abandoned his CEGEP studies in Montreal, first to head west and work in Alberta, and then to set up a hotel with his friends in the Laurentian Mountains. The same boldness that led him away from the classroom later took him to Africa, where his entire world view changed.

On a trip to Rwanda as a twenty-seven-year-old medical student, Orbinski realized that he had to respond to the misery being inflicted on the country. Upon returning home, he joined the Canadian branch of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and went to work during the Somali civil war and the Rwandan genocide of the early 1990s. In 1999, as president of MSF’s International Council, he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on the organization’s behalf. Since then, he has become an associate professor at the University of Toronto and the co-founder of Dignitas International, a humanitarian organization that implements community-based programs to fight HIV in Africa.

Early Exposure

When I was fourteen or fifteen, I had a job at an airport hotel. The place had a contract with Immigration Canada and part of the building was a detention centre for people held at the airport. Usually, these people had declared refugee status and were trying to enter the country without proper documentation. I was a short-order cook and waiter for the detainees. I would serve them food and then sit and listen as they talked about escaping from Guatemala or El Salvador. The experience taught me that life is not a movie and that the world out there is also in here, in my space, in my life.

One teacher in high school — a man named Michael Lieberman — was profoundly influential in this regard. He nurtured a sense that everyone must be able to respond and, therefore, response-able or responsible. He taught me that our values matter, that they are the beginning of whatever enterprise we undertake. Through him and others, I slowly understood the importance of choice. The exercise of choice is our greatest responsibility as human beings. We all have to choose how we’re going to be in the world. That, more than any information I acquired in high school, left a serious mark.

University Days

When it came time to apply to university, I was looking for something multidisciplinary: a place where I could spend time outside; a place where I’d be treated as a person rather than a number. I had no firm idea of what I wanted to do. I just wanted to learn as much as I could.

What sold me on Trent University was the recruiter. He was sincere, he wasn’t pretentious, and he seemed genuinely interested in me. He wasn’t trying to sell me anything. He was just trying to help me find the right place. I just felt that if this was the kind of person they chose to represent the university, then that was the place I wanted to go.

Besides, I’d always had this fantasy about the Trent-Severn Waterway. I’d never been there, but I’d read about it in brochures. Wow, I used to say. Look at those rivers. I’m going to canoe to school every day!

Trent was a wonderful place. It had a collegiate system and small tutorials where you received close academic attention. It was also contemporary. They were doing Native and environmental studies when no other universities would touch those subjects. There was a religious zeal about ensuring that every student had a solid arts and science background by the end of the first two years. You weren’t allowed to specialize until your third year. Education was about exposure.

I studied experimental theatre, environmental science, biochemistry, phenomenology, accounting, and computer science. Blake, Shelley and Keats was one of my favourite courses, as were Irish and English Literature and Canadian Literature. I guess I was trying to understand my place in the world and my cultural background, in terms of current political realities, my family history, and, having come to Canada from England at the age of nine, being an immigrant. Feeling Canadian only came slowly — it came through a process of inquiry and constant questioning.

In the end, I majored in psychology. I loved all the deep philosophical questions that emerged in psychology class: What is the self? What is the other? Can you alter perception? All that fascinated me. I would listen to one professor talk about the existential implications of the phenomenology of perception. The next hour I would listen to someone tell me that was bullshit, and all that mattered was what could be measured, walking us through the lessons of chi-square distribution.

What’s Your Question?

The whole time, I was exploring with intent. It wasn’t just an orgy of passions and ideas. I knew that I was interested in clinical psychology and that I wanted to enter some kind of concrete profession.

Oftentimes, people assume there’s a map, one algorithmic answer to life. I see it a lot in students, especially with the phenomenon of résumés — everyone’s a volunteer, everyone’s saving the world, everyone’s a superhero, and they get A+ in every course. Students come and ask me what they should do, and implicit in their questions is the idea that there’s a right way of going through the steps, that if they’re not following the map, they’re missing out.

There is no map. Everyone needs to find what excites and intrigues them. The issue is not "what’s the question? but what’s your question?"

In my experience, that question changed. It would lead me in a direction, and then I’d get an answer and be forced to change tracks. Coming out of university, it was, Do I want to pursue clinical psychology? That question landed me in a high-security youth detention centre in Calgary.

I was a youth worker there. The adolescents were being held in custody while awaiting either a court date or a custody order. They were mostly street kids who had been involved in prostitution, drug sales, or violence. When I sat and talked to them, I came to see that the vast majority of them had been either sexually or physically abused, neglected, or forced from their homes.

A lot of what we did ended up being a form of counselling: helping kids think about their overall direction in life and getting them access, if necessary, to psychologists.

Changing Tracks

Ultimately, I realized that counselling wasn’t a great fit for me. I don’t want to minimize the importance of psychology, but I found that, in my experience, it was entirely too technical. It overlooked the genuineness that can exist between two people. It imposed a set of technical skills, tools, and models on all interactions.

I also felt that I needed something practical. I thought medicine would be the best profession to pursue because, though requiring a deep knowledge base, it was also very practical. I felt that I could remain myself as a physician. My time at the detention centre had helped me understand that.

In the end, I applied to medical school. I thought that the program at McMaster University would be the best fit — and it was. It was problem-based learning, with small tutorials, self-evaluations, real patients, real problems, and no lectures. The first week, I was presented with the case of a five-year-old boy who came to his doctor with an ear infection, received treatment, and returned three days later with meningitis. Right away, I had to learn about the interior workings of the ear, the anatomy of the neck, why the infection would pass from the ear to the nervous system, and what an immune system was. I was acquiring knowledge in a very practical way.

Working in Rwanda

I fell in love with immunology in my first week of med school, mainly because it seemed as though no one knew much about it. I loved how confusing and challenging it was. The biggest thing in the area of immunology was AIDS, especially pediatric AIDS. No one knew a thing. In my third year, Dick Newfeld, the associate dean and my medical advisor, pushed me to pursue the issue and apply for a fellowship with the Medical Research Council of Canada and the International Development Research Centre. The fellowship involved going to the main hospital in Kigali, Rwanda.

I did it for the adventure more than anything. Africa was a huge mystery. You’re adding another year, a lot of people said. What are you going to learn? What does this have to do with medicine? It’s crazy! But many were supportive too.

When I arrived in Rwanda, I realized just how unprepared I was. I didn’t even understand that politics like that were possible. Beneath the surface, it was a very different, dark culture. At the time, the development mantra was pervasive among aid workers: Everyone’s developing and the West is great. That was the dominant feeling at the time. There was a strong sense of postcolonial superiority to it all. But it was a very hopeful time too.

I was twenty-seven and very idealistic. That hasn’t changed. I’m still very hopeful about the world. Once you see that there are other ways of living, that there are good and bad politics, then you can choose to respond. What’s your choice? If you choose cynicism, despair, and self-indulgence, then you get what you choose. If you choose to work hard and make the lives of others slightly better, then you’ll find your life will be more stimulating, interesting, and meaningful.

Discovering Médecins Sans Frontières

My experience in Rwanda completely changed my life. I suddenly knew that pediatric immunology and the study of infectious diseases weren’t going to cut it. Not for me. As fascinating as they were, there were people far better at it than I was. I liked it, but I didn’t love it anymore. I knew I had to do something else to help ease the suffering I’d seen.

Before going to Rwanda, I had never heard of Médecins Sans Frontières. There was no website because there was no Internet. I met a couple of its aid workers at a party in Rwanda. But since the organization wasn’t actually working in the country at the time, that was the only exposure I had. When I came back, a guy at med school named Richard Heinzl knew more about MSF and was interested in starting a Canadian chapter. I jumped at the opportunity to join.

Médecins Sans Frontières brought a significant change to humanitarianism. It broke all the rules, shattering everyone’s conceptions of neutrality. By proceeding in the way it did, the organization proclaimed that there are certain circumstances under which one can no longer be neutral. That was bold and that’s what I gravitated towards.

Getting Out of Debt

Coming out of med school, I had a lot of debt to pay off. You’ve got to be somewhat mercenary about how you approach your finances, especially in our society. I didn’t want anything pulling me down the traditional path so many other doctors were following. The best way to do that was to work damned hard for a few years.

I was working as a locum in Orangeville while the doctor I was replacing was sick. Unfortunately, he ultimately died. I had no intention of buying the practice, but there was a demand, so, in the end, I did.

I was living in Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market area at the time MSF Canada was getting off the ground. You have a lot of flexibility when you own a practice. You can close for an afternoon or take a morning off. It was essential to be able to take time to work on MSF. Without the Orangeville practice, I never would have been able to ditch my debts and fully commit to such a time-consuming initiative.

Finding a Path

You don’t do humanitarian work to win a prize. You do it because you must — because you have no other choice. I’d always tried to figure out my place in the world. After a while, I realized that I had no choice. I knew that, however futile it seemed, it was better to take that extreme step than to wallow in despair or acquiescence. So I forged on.

MARGOT FRANSSEN

Because we didn’t know what could go wrong, we just kept moving forward with as much energy as we could muster.

When Margot Franssen left York University with a philosophy degree in 1979, she had no idea what lay in store. Five years later, along with husband Quig Tingley and sister Betty-Ann, she brought The Body Shop to Canada and oversaw one of the British cosmetic chain’s most profitable markets. It set a benchmark for combining retail savvy with social activism. As president of the company, she stood behind her promise never to test on animals, while vigorously campaigning for the environment and human rights long before those causes became chic among CEOs.

After selling the Canadian rights back to the parent company in 2004, Franssen immediately set up Accessorize, a women’s accessory chain, with eleven stores across three provinces. An Officer of the Order of Canada and a recipient of the United Nations Grand Award for fighting violence against women, Franssen also serves on the board of the CIBC and the Women’s College Hospital and is president of the Canadian Women’s Foundation.

Glass Ceilings

In 1954, when I was two years old, my parents and I emigrated from Holland. Although my father was trained as a mechanical engineer, no one in Canada would accept his degree, so he and my mom were forced to start from scratch. He learned English, pumped gas, and went to night school, while my mom cleaned houses. I remember a time when there wasn’t enough food to eat, but my parents’ determination to make a good home for my sister and me was a real inspiration. I watched them slowly and steadily climb the ladder to the middle class.

When I was eighteen, we were living in Lethbridge, Alberta. I desperately wanted to be in Toronto. I yearned for the bustle and liveliness of the big city. The second I finished high school, I hopped on a train to Toronto in search of a job. I found a rooming house where I shared a bathroom with six girls and a kitchen with four, and paid $12 a week in rent. I was happy as a clam.

Having already worked in retail throughout my teenage years, I decided to look for an office job. Though confident in myself, I had no marketable skills. I had to fib on all my applications, claiming I could clerk and type.

Miraculously, I landed a job at an investment firm called McLeod Young Weir. I posted retail stock sales and made coffee for $80 a week. I watched these young men come through the office as part of the training program and I’d say to myself, I could do that. I’m easily as smart as they are. But when I asked about the program, my boss just laughed. We don’t pay for women to do that, he said. They wouldn’t pass. The culture at McLeod Young Weir was clearly defined: I would be left posting stock sales forever. I said, Too bad, your loss, and left.

My next job was as a secretary in the human resources department at a mutual fund company. I interviewed women and was required to ask the most bizarre and appalling questions: What is the state of your marriage? Does your husband allow you to work? What kind of birth control are you using? Those were the standard legal questions in the 1970s. I couldn’t stand it, so I left again.

In those days, being the only Chinese-Canadian in the CFL was kind of a novelty. I didn’t receive any adverse treatment from my teammates. It was a different story in public places and in other cities, though, especially at some of the big hotels and stores we used to go to — or tried to go to. We weren’t made to feel very welcome. It wasn’t something they made a big point of, but you could still feel it. Only when people learned I was a first-string player and had made some of the all-star teams did I begin to earn their respect. But it took time.

— Normie Kwong, Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta, former CFL halfback for the Calgary Stampeders and the Edmonton Eskimos, the youngest player to win a Grey Cup, and, upon retirement, the holder of thirty league records

Then I got a job as a personal assistant at another investment firm. After I kept bugging them, the company finally paid for me to take the Investment Dealers Association course. I was amazed, thinking I was finally going to be allowed to trade. I passed the first and the second tests easily. On the third test, I even had higher marks than the president of the company, who was taking it at the same time. After each one, I approached management and asked if I could trade. The answer was always the same: Maybe next year. One day, I stepped back, took stock of myself, and realized I couldn’t wait for others to allow me to achieve my goal. I had watched my mother and father fight their way through hardship. I wasn’t going to let anyone hold me back.

The Paper Chase

I knew I would never get ahead without more education, so I enrolled in business courses at York University. The only way to justify starting a bachelor’s degree at twenty-three was to have a clearly defined goal: mine was to end with a job in hand.

The first few months of classes were horrible. The study of business was excruciatingly boring. One day, I met a student who seemed really passionate about the university experience. I asked him what he studied. He said he was majoring in philosophy. What’s that? I asked. I had literally no idea. When he started talking about the various branches of philosophy and the questions they sought to answer, bells began ringing in my head. I thought it sounded like the most intriguing thing in the world. I quickly switched my major.

I knew a philosophy degree would be practically worthless and wouldn’t help me get a job. But I was so happy to find something I could be passionate about. Over the next three and a half years, I fell in love with academics. The difference between high school and university was staggering. Suddenly, I became a new type of student: one who actually enjoyed learning.

The Gift

Since I was living with my boyfriend, Quig, I was lucky enough to have the security of a roof over my head and food on the table. That said, I still worked part-time as an assistant to sculptor Maryon Kantaroff. She was a remarkable person who introduced me to the world of feminism and the women fighting for equality. I had never come into intimate contact with feminism before, but everything they said reverberated with me. My experience over the previous four years was proof that these women were right: change was necessary.

When I graduated from university, Maryon bought me a present. It was a gift basket from a new store called The Body Shop, which she had discovered while working in England. I was grateful for the gift but didn’t really use all the products. Thank you, I said, putting it aside. Later, knowing she would ask me if I liked it, I decided to open the basket. The cosmetic bottles inside were the ugliest things I had ever seen! They looked like urine samples. I was intrigued — not so much by the products themselves, but by the packaging. I went back to Maryon and asked about the store. It’s like an apothecary’s shop, she told me. A refill bar on one side and a perfume bar on the other.

I needed a job. I didn’t want to go to graduate school, and with a philosophy degree I couldn’t do much else. My mind began rushing ahead of me, thinking about what I might be able to do with a business like The Body Shop in Canada.

Taking a Leap

Quig gave me the plane fare to go and see what The Body Shop was actually like. I flew to London with a flight attendant friend who could travel for free. Our intention was to copy the idea and bring it back to Canada.

The company was still fairly small: they had been running for three years and only had six locations. My friend and I rented a car and drove around to every store. Every time we walked in, I felt like I was hearing a song I already knew, a tune I could hum even if I didn’t know the words. In hindsight, I realize it was the corporate culture I was responding to. I was intrigued enough to phone Anita and Gordon Roddick, the store’s founders, and ask if we could discuss expanding into Canada.

I had lunch with Anita, who then invited me for dinner that evening. Initially, I said no — I’m not sure why — but she pushed me until I agreed.

When I knocked at their door, a little girl answered. I announced that I was there to see her parents. You must be the lady from Canada, she chirped. I expect that after dining with us you’ll want children of your own! I was