Four Winnipeggers to join Order of Canada

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This article was published 27/12/2018 (2676 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Four Winnipeggers who will soon to be appointed to the Order of Canada hope the award will draw Canadians’ attention to their own potential.

On Thursday, Rideau Hall announced 103 people who will be named to the Order at ceremonies in 2019.

The Free Press spoke with all four locals, who include a homegrown Hollywood star, an engineer determined to help feed millions, a prominent volunteer and a cardiologist who advocates for preventative care.

Len Cariou has won numerous awards during six decades of performances on stage, in movies and on television in Canada and the United States. He currently appears on the TV police drama Blue Bloods as the punchy great-grandfather.

His hometown remains close to his heart. “In Winnipeg, the performing arts is healthier than it ever was. And that’s really because of the people of Manitoba and the city of Winnipeg — I’m so proud of them,” Cariou said.

Born in 1939 and raised in St. Boniface, Cariou made his debut at Rainbow Stage in Kildonan Park in 1959. Cariou was there when John Hirsch co-founded the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre in 1958, and helped with Hirsch’s travelling performances to high schools and towns across Manitoba.

Hirsch mentored the young sea cadet, helping Cariou land roles in Winnipeg and at Ontario’s Stratford Festival. Broadway came calling, and by 1970, Cariou was being nominated for Tony Awards.

Though work has since sent him across the continent, Cariou returns to Winnipeg about four times a year. He visits his grandchildren and tries to help nurture local talent.

“I’ve had a pretty lucky, and extraordinary, situation,” he said, sounding emotional about the Order of Canada. “There are no words for how honoured I feel.”

Digvir Jayas is a vice-president at the University of Manitoba, overseeing its research units and ties abroad, while improving agricultural practices around the world.

He grew up on a small farm in India, where he saw a lot of spoiled crops. He combined a knack for engineering with a passion for preserving harvests, eventually developing technologies to improve how grain is dried, monitored and stored.

He’s authored 900 technical articles, and created a low-energy, horizontal airflow dryer that has been put into use across North America, Ukraine and China, in part to help with changing climate patterns.

Jayas hopes joining the Order might help push politicians to invest more in preserving grain. By his calculation, some 640 million tonnes of grain is spoiled each year, enough to feed 1.5 billion people.

“It’s easy to announce an increase in the yield. But if you save what you have produced, the number has not changed… but the available food has changed,” Jayas said, adding small-scale farmers often bear the brunt of spoilage, because firms only buy grains at their highest quality.

Jayas moved to Winnipeg in June 1980 and hasn’t looked back, save for a short stint in Saskatoon.

Cariou and Jayas will both be appointed as officers of the Order of Canada, a rank above ordinary members, but below companions.

Doneta Brotchie is well-known in Winnipeg’s volunteer and business circles, which she’s worked to bridge for decades.

“Once you are involved in an organization, our city is the kind of city where it’s one degree of separation,” she said.

Through her creative-project management firm, Brotchie has helped charities with the canned donation sculpture contest Canstruction and the CancerCare fundraiser Bears on Broadway.

Both projects gave her a passion for forging “win-wins” by connecting charities and advocates with local businesses who want to help their communities.

She now co-ordinates Leadership Winnipeg, a months-long training program that has helped 400 emerging local leaders develop communication and management skills, held by the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce and Volunteer Manitoba.

Brotchie has been on multiple boards involving arts and culture as well as business. She served as the first female president of the Manitoba Club, some 132 years into the private social club’s existence.

“The really unique thing about Winnipeg (is that) you can reach out and there will be connection between you and where you want to go,” she said.

Ross Feldman arrived in Winnipeg in August 2017 on a mission to help Manitobans get more personal control over their health care through preventative work and research.

“We have to do a better job as health-care providers in empowering our patients,” said Feldman, a principal investigator in cardiovascular science at St. Boniface Hospital.

Feldman’s research has helped experts start treating blood pressure as its own problem instead of a symptom of other diseases, leading Canada to some of the world’s best treatment rates.

He now focuses on how cultural and social issues impact health. For example, men often discover heart disease through a squeezing feeling in their chest, while women more commonly report pressure in the neck, though the medical field has termed it “atypical chest pain” for years.

In Winnipeg, he’s particularly interested in the heart health of Indigenous people and post-menopausal women, as well as Manitobans outside the Perimeter Highway, who have less access to health care.

Feldman knows recent provincial health reform has attracted criticism, but he believes it will allow some specialists to imitate personal trainers, helping patients craft lifestyle plans to prevent disease.

“Here, I was struck by the willingness to consider change. These are generational opportunities,” he said, saying the proof will be a decline in the rate of heart attacks and strokes.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca