About the Authors

Howard Adelman, professor emeritus of philosophy at York University, published his last two books in 2011: No Return, No Refuge (co-author Elazar Barkan) with Columbia University Press and Religion, Culture and the State (co-editor Pierre Anctil) with the University of Toronto Press. Adelman, the founding director of the Centre for Refugee Studies and editor of Refuge until 1993, has written or co-authored eight books, edited or co-edited nineteen others and authored over two hundred scholarly papers in book chapters and academic journals. He has continued to write articles, but his main efforts are now invested in a blog that can be read on Word Press under Howard Adelman.

Shelley Campagnola is the director of the Mennonite Coalition for Refugee Support (MCRS). She has had long career working with people of all ages in a variety of business, charitable, and not-for-profit contexts in local, national, and international settings. Her strengths are in organizational realignment, strategic planning and program development, research and leadership development, and community partnerships and integration. Since May 2016, when Campagnola joined MCRS, there have been significant changes globally, politically, socially, and economically pertaining to refugee claimants. She has increasingly been one of the many leaders on the cutting edge speaking about ways that communities and organizations can respond to ensure welcome, compassion, inclusion, and justice for people seeking refuge.

Matida Daffeh, anti-female genital mutilation and feminist activist from Republic of The Gambia, West Africa, is the co-founder of The Girls Agenda, a grassroots feminist movement working to end FGM and other traditional practices that violate the rights of women and girls. Daffeh has over ten years of experience working in both non-governmental and community-based organizations (at national and sub-regional levels) in the field of women’s empowerment, including promoting the leadership and political participation of women, and issues related to gender-based violence among others.

Eusebio Garcia is a refugee and settlement worker with the Quaker Committee for Refugees. Garcia assists refugees and other migrants through Friends House Toronto to file forms, apply for work permits, access health care coverage, obtain necessary documents, connect to legal services, find housing, understand educational options and openings, receive employment training, and more.

Julia Holland is a lawyer and director at Tory’s LLP, where she is responsible for risk management across the firm. Prior to assuming responsibility for risk management, Julia practiced litigation at Tory’s for ten years. Julia has a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University and an LLM from the University of Toronto.

William Janzen grew up in Saskatchewan but has spent most of his adult life in Ottawa, where he served as director of the Ottawa office of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) from 1975 to 2008. In this capacity he did advocacy work on a range of domestic and international issues while also representing MCC on various ecumenical and other coalitions such as Project Ploughshares. He has travelled to many parts of the world and lived in the Congo and in Egypt—spending approximately two years in each country. His education includes a PhD in political science from Carleton University and MA degrees in international affairs and in religion from Carleton and the University of Ottawa. He is married and has two adult children.

Katharine Lake Berz is an independent consultant and writer living in Toronto. Katharine was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company for ten years and has since advised a number of not-for-profit organizations. Recently Katharine helped establish a centre for launching new social enterprises and supporting research and communications for a public policy institute. Katharine has held board of director roles for five community organizations including one that helped settle twenty Syrian refugee families. Katharine holds a Bachelor of Commerce from Queen’s University and a Master of Philosophy in International Relations from Cambridge University.

George Melnyk is professor emeritus of communication, media, and film at the University of Calgary. He is a cultural historian who is the author or editor of twenty-five books, primarily on Canadian topics. He came to Canada as a stateless child-refugee with his parents. He was educated at the Universities of Manitoba, Chicago, and Toronto. He maintains a website of his most recent writings at www.georgemelnyk.com.

Michael Molloy joined the immigration foreign service in 1968 and served in Tokyo, Beirut, Kampala, and Minneapolis before returning to Ottawa in 1976 where he was director, refugee policy. As such, he led the design of the refugee provisions of the 1976 Immigration Act, including the Convention Refugee and Designated Classes and the private refugee sponsorship program. He was senior coordinator of the 1979–80 Indochinese refugee program that brought 60,000 refugees to Canada. He served as counsellor for humanitarian affairs at the Canadian Mission in Geneva and managed immigration and refugee operations in Jordan, Syria, and East Africa. After director-general level assignments in Ottawa and Toronto, he served as Canada’s ambassador to Jordan (1996–2000) and special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (2000–3). An adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, he is co-director of the Jerusalem Old City Initiative and president of the Canadian Immigration Historical Society.

Christina Parker is an assistant professor in social development studies at Renison University College at the University of Waterloo. She holds a PhD and a master’s in teaching from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto and is an Ontario Certified Teacher, with a specialization in teaching history. Parker’s research on peacebuilding education in diverse multicultural classrooms with immigrant and refugee children shows how dialogic pedagogies facilitate inclusive spaces where all students can participate and have their voices heard. She is the author of Peacebuilding, Citizenship, and Identity: Empowering Conflict and Dialogue in Multicultural Elementary Classrooms (Brill | Sense, 2016).

Adam Policzer and Irene Boisier met when they studied architecture in Santiago’s Universidad de Chile. They married and had three children. They were active supporters of Salvador Allende’s government. In 1973, the government was overthrown by a military coup. Adam was imprisoned for two years. When he was freed, the family came to Canada. After validating his credentials, Adam opened a private architectural practice, specializing in social housing. Irene, after receiving a master’s in urban planning at the University of British Columbia, worked as a city planner and later as a community development worker helping marginalized people, mostly immigrants and refugees. At present they are both retired, living in Vancouver.

Pablo Policzer is an associate professor of political science at the University of Calgary. A specialist in comparative politics, his research focuses on the evolution of violent conflict in authoritarian and democratic regimes. His book The Rise and Fall of Repression in Chile (Notre Dame University Press, 2009) won the 2010 award for best book in comparative politics from the Canadian Political Science Association. He obtained his PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his BA (Honours, First Class) in political science from the University of British Columbia.

Victor Porter is originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He arrived in Vancouver in 1984 as a government-assisted refugee. He has worked in a variety of jobs: dishwasher, cook, beekeeper, production line worker, advocate, popular education facilitator, coordinating British Columbia’s response to human trafficking, and recently as a negotiator with the Hospital Employees Union. He lives with his wife, Maria Inés. They have four children—Maria Teresa, Paula Isabel, Camilo, and Jorge Luis.

Cyrus Sundar Singh is an AcademiCreActivist: Gemini Award–winning filmmaker, doctoral scholar, and musician, as well as a poet and storyteller. His recent installation Emancipation2Africville formed part of the Africville: Reflection Project at the MSVU Art Gallery in Nova Scotia (2019), and his mobile phone installation footage, an homage to Bata Shoe Museum, was installed at the 2018 WC2 Symposium, held at Ryerson University, in Toronto. His directorial debut, Film Club, is the winner of both a Gemini Award and the National Film Board of Canada’s Reel Diversity Award. On the foundation of his sixteen-year documentary career, he conceived and successfully explored a new site-specific hybrid live documentary genre, Performing the Documentary, with world premieres at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival—Brothers in the Kitchen (2016), Africville in Black and White (2017)—and at the Atlantic Film Festival (2018).

Boban Stojanović is a Serbian-Canadian peace and human rights activist who now lives in Calgary, where he works as a settlement practitioner and outreach worker for LGBTQ+ Services at the Centre for Newcomers. He was a founder and one of the key organizers of the Belgrade Pride Parade. In 2013, Stojanović was the first gay person to participate in the Serbian edition of Celebrity Big Brother. In the same year, he published his autobiography As If Everything Was OK. He was International Grand Marshal at Montréal Pride 2014. A year later he was shortlisted as one of the top five LGBTQ+ activists in the world (David Kato—Vision and Voice Award).

Flora Terah is a Kenyan Canadian author, a public speaker, and the ambassador for ShelterBox Canada. Trained as a social worker, she has a wealth of experience as an HIV/AIDS trainer and women’s rights advocate in her native country of Kenya as well as in her adopted home of Canada. As a victim of horrible violent acts, the need for peaceful solutions is never far from her thoughts. She has combined her experience as grassroots organizer, educator, and women’s rights defender with her experience as a survivor of violence to become a powerful role model for non-violence in Canada and around the world. Since arriving in Canada in 2009, Terah has been active in several Canadian organizations, sharing her expertise and participating in public education campaigns on the violence that women and children face. She has continued this advocacy with the Stephen Lewis Foundation, Jean Sauvé Foundation, McGill University, York University, Carleton University, and Canadian Lawyers Abroad, among others. A lot of what she has done is deemed motivational and supports her desire to end the violence and bullying experienced by women and children, thus creating peaceful environments locally and beyond borders.