1992 Recipients

Sandra Lovelace Sappier
Perth, New Brunswick

A Malaseet Indian, Sandra Lovelace Sappier has been a driving force in securing equality rights for aboriginal women in Canada. Challenging discriminatory provisions of the Indian Act which deprived aboriginal women of their status when they married non-Indians, she was instrumental in bringing the case before the United Nations Human Rights Commission and lobbying for the 1985 legislation which reinstated the rights of Indian women in Canada.

Doreen Orman
Calgary, Alberta

Doreen Orman's life's work reflects the significant societal changes women can affect through their leadership of voluntary organizations at community, national and international levels. Through the many senior executive positions she has held with the YWCA and the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, she has initiated programs aimed at improving living conditions for disadvantaged women and their children in Canada and the developing world.

Dorothy Reitman
Montreal, Quebec

Throughout a voluntary career spanning four decades, Dorothy Reitman has advocated women's equality and opened roads to their empowerment. In addition to initiating self-help programs for women at the community level, she has promoted women's political involvement as a means to affect social change. She was instrumental in establishing a coalition of the leaders of Montreal women's groups in an effort to promote dialogue and trust among women of different cultures in Quebec, and was the first female president of the Canadian Jewish Congress.

Shirley M. Robinson
Gloucester, Ontario

Lieutenant-Colonel (Retired) Shirley Robinson has devoted a significant part of her life to improving and enhancing the role and opportunities of women within the Canadian Armed Forces. During a 30-year military career, she was an active advocate of women's equality in employment and conditions of military service. Now retired from active service, she has continued her efforts as co-founder of the Association for Women's Equity in the Armed Forces.

Shelagh Wilkinson
Toronto, Ontario

As a scholar, teacher and community activist, Professor Shelagh Wilkinson has played a hallmark role in feminizing the institutional and community practices of the educational system. Founding member of the Women's Studies program at York University as well as founding director of York's Centre for Feminist Research, she designed and implemented the Bridging Program at York's Atkinson College which has allowed hundreds of disenfranchised women access to the university. She continues to raise issues of concern to women as general editor of the national scholarly journal Canadian Women's Studies/les cahiers de la femme, a publication she established in 1978.

Date modified:

2015-04-27