Honour in Order for seven Manitobans

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This article was published 27/11/2020 (1923 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Seven Manitobans are to receive Canada’s highest honour.

On Friday, Gov.-Gen. Julie Payette announced 114 new appointments to the Order of Canada, who will join nearly 7,000 Canadians from all walks of life who have received the award.

The appointment is selected by the Governor General after a recommendation from the Order of Canada advisory council, and is open to anyone, regardless of occupation, who has enriched the lives of others in their community.

This year’s list includes seven Manitobans in two categories.

The Officer of the Order of Canada will be awarded to:

• former MP and MLA Bill Blaikie;
• sociologist and former Olympic athlete Sandra Kirby;
• curler and sports broadcaster Don Duguid;
• business owner William Fast;
• former senator Janis Gudrun Johnson; and
• University of Manitoba Max Rady College of Medicine dean Brian Postl.

The Companion of the Order of Canada will be awarded to astrophysicist James Peebles.

To be among such an esteemed group is overwhelming, Duguid said in an interview.

“I’ve read a lot of stuff every year on who was getting in, whether it was a scientist or a doctor or a hockey player or whoever it was — I was always impressed. I always thought to myself, ‘Boy, wouldn’t it be nice to get in that,’ because that’s the top of the jug right there,” he said.

Curling is in the 85-year-old’s blood. As a child, he would help his father make ice, and was infatuated with the game early on.

“I was so small I couldn’t throw (the curling rock) down like everybody throws them, I had to push them with two hands and two feet to get them down to the other end,” he said.

Duguid went on to become part of the winning rink at the 1970 and ‘71 world curling championships, and claimed Brier titles in 1965, ‘70 and ‘71. He left the ice in 1972 to become a sports broadcaster for the CBC.

“Broadcasting, you’re traveling all over the world — it was just a wonderful, wonderful job,” he said. “Sometimes, I felt like they didn’t even have to pay me, I was really enjoying it.”

He covered two Olympics with CBC and three with NBC, spending 29 and 11 years, respectively, with those networks.

The goal, Duguid said, was to make curling more exciting to TV viewers. He and fellow broadcaster Don Whitman suggested to producers they attach microphones to the skip of the team, to listen in on in-game strategy.

“The audience just boomed. It was huge after that,” he said.

While Duguid brought a sport to the public masses, Kirby spent decades exposing behind-the-scenes issues. Her research and advocacy work focuses on, among other topics, bringing awareness to sexual harassment and abuse in sport.

“I want sport to be a place where kids can thrive, they can have positive experiences and they can be successful,” she said.

Learning she had been chosen for the Order of Canada was a “tremendous,” if not surprising, honour for the decorated athlete (member of the first women’s rowing team at the 1976 Summer Olympics, 2018 inductee to the Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame).

“My dad was military, so I have some appreciation of what it means to wear something to signify an honourific,” she said.

At 71, Kirby remains a competitive rower who trains six days a week.

Her advocacy work also continues. She’s a founding member of Safe Sport International, an organization fighting the mistreatment of athletes worldwide, and is currently part of a research project with the Centre for Sport and Human Rights.

Decades of advocating for marginalized groups in sport has shifted her work from discussing gender equity to exploring the effects of race, ability and cultural background as influencers of sport.

“When I started this work way back when, we were just talking about simple stuff like the numbers, and a little bit about the quality of the experience. Now it’s about the requirement that sport be a better place for everyone,” she said.

Order of Canada recipients will receive their insignia at a ceremony at a date still to be decided.

 

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: malakabas_