Read the 2022 awards program

AMA Medal for Distinguished Service

Dr. James Kellner

Pediatrics / Infectious Diseases / Community Health , Calgary

Dr. James (Jim) Kellner received his medical training in Calgary and Toronto, specializing in pediatrics& and infectious diseases. He is currently a clinician researcher at Alberta Children’s Hospital and a professor of pediatrics, Community Health Sciences, and Microbiology, Immunology & Infectious Diseases at the University of Calgary.

At every stage of his career, Dr. Kellner has taken leadership roles, as chief resident of pediatrics at the Hospital for Sick Children and in Calgary as royal college program director for pediatric infectious diseases, section chief of pediatric infectious diseases, associate director, Institute of Maternal and Child Health, and deputy department head for research and administration. His greatest contributions came when he was head of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Calgary and Calgary Zone of Alberta Health Services from 2008 to 2018. Under Dr. Kellner’s leadership, the department grew dramatically, with the medical and scientific workforce increasing by more than 75%. In addition to his administrative and educational roles, he has maintained both his clinical practice and an active research career.

He has been recognized for his services with numerous honours, including recent awards from the University of Calgary Department of Pediatrics (Advocacy and Leadership Award 2021), Alberta Children’s Hospital Medical Staff (Physician of the Year 2017), Cumming School of Medicine (CME and Professional Development Top Teacher Award 2021), Pediatric Chairs of Canada (Appreciation Award for three years as president 2016 and COVID Leadership Award 2020) and American Academy of Pediatrics (Distinguished Service Award 2019).

Dr. Kellner has made innumerable contributions to pediatrics and infectious disease epidemiology through his career. For twenty years, ten as committee chair, he has been providing expertise and guidance to the province’s vaccine policy as a member of what is now known as the Alberta Advisory Committee on Immunization. His commitment to rigorous evidence reviews, population health considerations and improving the health of Albertans has benefitted us all. During the past two years, working with the COVID-19 Analytics and Strategy Group, the COVID-19 Immunity Task Force (CITF), and the National Immunity Taskforce, his contributions have reached a new level and we have all benefitted from his knowledge of how we could best respond to and control the impact of the pandemic.

To help meet the need for reliable, balanced and scientifically informed information among health professionals and the general public, Dr. Kellner has spoken at more than 60 local, provincial and national video-conferenced COVID-19 education events, and given nearly 200 media interviews. He has remained focused on the health of children by leading efforts to assemble pediatric cohorts and trials across the country related to COVID-19, including vaccination trials, to ensure that the best Canadian science was contributing to the making of evidence-informed and timely decisions to minimize the harms of the pandemic on children. Canadians are fortunate to have such a resolute and expert clinician who gives so generously of his time and energy to ensure that children receive the best care possible.

Dr. Christopher Wilkes

Psychiatry / Pediatrics, Calgary

For more than three decades, Dr. Christopher Wilkes has been a force for change as a clinician and as a leader in advocating for quality mental health supports for children and adolescents.

He received his medical training in England, followed by internships and residencies in England, Scotland and Canada in both pediatrics and psychiatry. He has been practising in Alberta since 1987, first in Lethbridge and then, since 1990, in Calgary, where he has maintained both a clinical practice and an academic position at the University of Calgary. He is currently section chief for outpatients in Child and Adolescent Addiction and Mental Health Community and Specialized Services, Calgary Zone, Alberta Health Services; the University of Calgary/AHS division head of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and a member of the pediatric and psychiatry faculties; professor of psychiatry and current curricula chair for the PGY-5 and PGY-6 Child and Adolescent Training Residency Program at the University of Calgary.

He has worked tirelessly to advocate for mental health literacy and supports, both provincially and nationally, educating the public about such issues as marijuana and the developing brain, kids in crisis, mood disorders and suicide. During the pandemic, he has worked for child and youth welfare, arguing for the importance of recreational activities for building resilience. He has lobbied hard to reinstate the grant for Regional Collaborative Service Delivery, which gave families access to special education programs including mental health, occupational, physical and speech-language therapists. He has promoted health equity as a member of the Population, Public and Indigenous Health Strategic Clinical Network for AHS since its inception in 2016 and has provided psychiatric consultation for the First Nations settlement in Morley for more than ten years. Even during his sabbatical year in 2011, which he took to recover from metastatic head and neck cancer, he continued working on behalf of Alberta’s young people.

Dr. Wilkes has received numerous awards for his work, including the Professional Association of Interns and Residents in Alberta Award for Teaching; a Certificate of Appreciation for his years of service as a physician examiner with the Medical Council of Canada; the People First Award as part of the Complex Kids Collaborative Team; and the inaugural Friends of Canada Award presented by the mayor of Calgary for bringing the International Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions (IACAPAP) to Calgary. This vital conference brought together multiple disciplines into one location for a unique collaborative opportunity to integrate mental health services. Hence, this was an important vehicle for increasing awareness of child and adolescent mental health, decreasing stigmatism, advocating for local services and research and delivering trauma-informed education.

As Dr. Wilkes transitions to part-time work, this Medal for Distinguished Service recognizes the great debt that the AMA, the medical profession in this province and the people of Alberta owe him for his years of dedicated service and advocacy.

Read the 2021 awards program

AMA Medal for Distinguished Service

Dr. Jane B. Lemaire

Internal Medicine, Calgary

The influence of Dr. Jane Lemaire’s overall work promoting physician wellness cannot be understated.
Physicians suffer distress because of the work that they do, as the pandemic has shown all too clearly. Practising medicine too often comes with an immense cost both to the individual physician’s wellness and to the health care system and patients. It is estimated that burnout costs the health care system $7,000 USD per physician per year, and with over 11,000 Alberta physicians, this amounts to almost $80 million USD. In Dr. Lemaire’s studies, patients reported that when they judge physicians to be burnt out, the doctor-patient relationship is fractured in many ways, including lack of trust, less adherence to suggested medical care, and switching doctors. Burnt-out physicians order more unnecessary tests, have riskier prescribing profiles, and spend less time with patients. Physicians who are well are able to engage in improving the delivery of health care, with widespread benefit.

Well Doc Alberta, a knowledge translation program created by Dr. Lemaire and her colleagues, addresses gaps in the continuum of care for physicians facing occupational distress with education about wellness and interventions to help them lessen distress. As the pandemic has swept over Alberta, Dr. Lemaire and her colleagues, working collaboratively with stakeholder groups, have provided expertise on pandemic planning committees to address the psychological and physical threats to physicians and consultations to many groups concerned about the wellness of their physicians. They have also provided opportunities for education and self-reflection with physician-specific education bulletins, podcasts, and webinars.

Dr. Lemaire has also evolved into a superb medical educator as a result of the knowledge and experience gained from her work with the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, which has enabled her to apply her research findings and disseminate them effectively and broadly. She has worked to develop programs to enhance understanding of this new field of study, to provoke self-reflection about what affects doctors, their profession, and the need for health care systems to change to support physician wellness, and to coach individual physicians and organizations to address the drivers of occupational distress for physicians. Changing attitudes and behaviors and effecting culture change is challenging work, but Dr. Lemaire has worked steadily to meet that task. She has delivered over 450 presentations, responding to invitations from most Canadian faculties of medicine, Stanford University, Hennepin Health care, University of Minnesota, Otago University, and Auckland University, as well as national and international physician wellness conferences.

Her work has earned multiple awards, including the RCPSC International Collaborator Award in 2019, the Stanford Medicine WellMD Center 2018 Physician Well-Being Article Award, and the CMA Physician Misericordia Award for outstanding leadership and support for physician colleagues in 2016. As the pandemic puts ever-greater pressure on physicians and the health care system, her work becomes ever more vital.

Dr. James L. Silvius

Geriatric Medicine, Calgary

When the federal government announced that Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) would become legal in Canada, Alberta looked to Dr. James Silvius to lead the way. Dr. Silvius brought together the professions, professionals, and regulatory bodies needed to move this new responsibility forward. He worked with families and patients to ensure that their voices were included. In the end, Alberta’s plan was so thoughtful and so well implemented that other provinces in Canada requested Dr. Silvius’s help as they created their own plans to provide MAID, and the federal government asked him to inform their ongoing review of the service. As a result of his work, Alberta is acknowledged as the leader in Canada for MAID policy and service delivery. He continues to lead ongoing work on the development of assisted dying protocols and various associated materials for AHS and as Chair of the Alberta Minister of Health’s Assisted Dying Regulatory Review Committee. He brings a patient-centred and compassionate approach to this difficult but necessary work. Dr. Silvius has ensured that MAID Alberta is a system that delivers lawful assistance in dying to people whose consent is rigorously determined, and in a manner that is compassionate to patients and respectful of health care providers who either wish to assist or who object to the practice. He advises other jurisdictions related to medical assistance in dying, including Health Canada and the State of Victoria, Australia.

Laying the groundwork for this important and demanding work has been more than three decades of deep dedication as a leader and clinician in driving quality health care in Alberta; he has led many beneficial initiatives and programs, including developing the 2014 Palliative and End of Life Care provincial framework, leading the quality agenda for Alberta’s vast and complex continuing care system (over 150,000 Albertans, 35,000 facility spaces, and 25,000 end-of-life recipients), and as a physician expert driving clinical practice changes across the care system in Alberta relating to appropriate prescribing, followed by leading the nation as a founder of the Canadian Deprescribing Network (CaDeN). His leadership in appropriate prescribing has resulted in Alberta leading the nation as related to Appropriate Use of Antipsychotics.

Dr. Silvius’s remarkable contributions have already been recognized by many prestigious awards, including the CMA’s Dr. William Marsden Award for Medical Ethics, the University of Calgary Division of Geriatric Medicine Recognition for Divisional Mentorship, the AMA Long Service Award, and the University of Calgary’s Terry Groves Award for Clinical Excellence and Department of Medicine Innovation Award (for development of the Department of Medicine Telehealth strategy). He has held numerous leadership roles at the hospital, university, provincial, federal, and international levels, as well as maintaining a clinical practice in geriatric medicine and remaining active in research. He is undaunted, it seems, by any challenge, and the people of Alberta have many reasons to be thankful for his dedication and service.

AMA Medal of Honor

Juliet R. Guichon

SJD, Calgary

“Juliet Guichon is a force of nature.” That is, at least, how she has been described by people who’ve worked with her. Dr. Guichon has helped to raise the standards of and increase attention to preventive health care in Alberta by advocating for the good that arises when scientific consensus, based on solid peer-reviewed research, is realized in government policy, practice, and law.

For example, when the HPV vaccine was approved in Canada and recommended by the National Advisory Committee on Immunization in early 2007, she learned from Calgary epidemiologists, pediatricians, and general practitioners that HPV vaccination in Calgary non-Catholic schools was a success, with more than 70% of the girls having received one or more doses, whereas less than 20% of girls attending the Calgary Catholic schools had received the vaccine. She simply could not accept this evidence of disparity; she had to do something. She fought hard to make the vaccine available to everyone who could benefit from it.

Dr. Guichon created a non-profit, nongovernmental organization and started a media and letter campaign against the twelve school districts in Canada that had banned HPV vaccine administration. She started in Calgary, through the organization she created, HPV Calgary. Once Calgary’s school doors opened to the vaccine in 2012, she created a second organization, HPV Canada, to open the doors in nine other Alberta school districts and one district each in Ontario and the Northwest Territories. Her campaigns were fierce; she held media events, she took all media calls, she sent letters to individual board members, she wrote op-ed pieces for major newspapers, she lobbied elected officials and administrators, all with the objective of influencing school board members to vote against the ban. She was oblivious to the roar of hatred from the anti-vaccine activists and to the damaging zealotry from the religious conservatives who favored the ban. By May 2014, all the bans were lifted. This is a magnificent story of citizen activism to improve public health.

She has waged similarly passionate and prolonged campaigns to ban flavors in tobacco products, to reduce nicotine addiction among young Albertans by regulating vaping and e-cigarettes, and to reinstate community water fluoridation in Calgary. In her academic work at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary, she teaches courses, conducts research, chairs committees, and mentors students. She has received the Canadian Medical Association Medal of Honour, the Canadian Public Health Association’s National Public Health Hero Award, and the Honorary Membership Award of the Alberta Dental Association and College. She has been invited by the Canadian House of Commons and Senate to testify in public hearings on health matters and has served on not for- profit boards nationally and internationally. As both an academic and an activist, she focuses on issues arising at the intersection of law, health care, ethics, religion, and journalism, working tirelessly to ensure that public policy is based on solid science and focused on improving public health.

Bev Garbutt

Cowley, Alberta

As a Licensed Nurse Practitioner and the wife of a rural family physician, Bev Garbutt recognized the difficulties and the importance of recruiting physicians to rural practice.

She saw that a lack of familiarity with rural life and a lack of training in the needs of rural practice kept many young doctors from considering the possibilities of practising medicine in a rural area. She spearheaded the Rural Enhancement Program to meet some of these needs. Students from rural areas and small communities are more likely to consider returning there after finishing their medical training, so the program offers such students assistance in navigating the educational journey to medical school, including intensive interview training to increase their chances of being admitted. In the past thirteen years, 173 university students from rural communities have participated in the program (with many more who couldn’t attend receiving informal assistance); half of those students have ultimately been admitted to medical school.

In addition, she has organized tours of rural hospitals and scenarios with rural EMS. When students who had taken such tours expressed interest in learning more about rural practice, she called almost every doctor within a hundred kilometer radius of Edmonton and Calgary to request that they take on students for a weekend of job shadowing. The weekend tours included a skills component that over time evolved to a full Skills Day where students could learn how to start IVs, cast fractures, and participate in trauma situations. She was responsible for organizing transportation, accommodation, preceptors, EMS trainers, even suture and casting supplies. After the program was established, the Rural Physician Action Plan took them over, and they continue today under the guidance of RhPAP. Hundreds of students have participated.

She was also instrumental in the development of the Tarrant Scholarship, which provides funds to medical students who have demonstrated an interest in studying and practicing rural medicine. Since its inception, this scholarship has provided over $400,000 to 37 medical students. So important has her contribution to the management and awarding of this scholarship been that some colleagues have suggested she ought to be the one handing it out.

Her commitment to rural medicine is unwavering. As one former student noted, when researching programs in Alberta for rural medical students, more often than not, the contact person was Bev Garbutt. She is tireless in her support for these students, both before they are admitted to medical school and after. When funds for programs in RPAP dried up, she found other sources of funding to make sure programs for medical students from rural areas didn’t disappear. Recently, she has been working to connect with resource and agricultural industries in Alberta to determine if there might be untapped donors for scholarship and bursary funding for rural students in medicine. Her work has enabled many students to move forward in their dream to become physicians and improved access to medical services for many, many rural Albertans.

The Committee on Achievement Awards recommended that the AMA confer special recognition in 2020 on specialists in Public Health and Preventive Medicine for their hard work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their dedication to protect Albertans in such a crisis and under such pressure is remarkable and worthy of our deepest respect. We acknowledge their leadership contributions, not only in the wake of the pandemic, but also in the continuous collaborative efforts to promote health and well-being of Albertans through various public health initiatives, projects and programs.

This specialty area sometimes misses the profile that other specialties enjoy with the public. COVID-19 has brought them to the forefront as our daily guides to health and safety. Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw and colleagues have been critical to Alberta’s response to the pandemic.

AMA salutes these colleagues for managing the tide of emerging evidence and crafting sound policy under extreme pressure. While COVID-19 grabbed the spotlight for much of 2020, the day to day work, year in and year out, of these specialists makes our province a safer place to live.

AMA Medal for Distinguished Service

Dr. Michael J. Bullard

When Dr. Michael Bullard retired in 2018, the emergency medicine community lost a true giant. He has cared for patients on four continents, taught generations of students and became a world leader in emergency medicine, in knowledge translation and in triage and acute care global health initiatives.

He received his medical training at the University of Alberta, at Foothills Hospital in Calgary, and at Luton and Dunstable Hospital in Luton, England. He was one of the founding members of Emergency Medicine in Canada, receiving his Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians specialist certification in 1985. In addition to working at various hospitals in Canada and England, he was one of four doctors operating a 300-bed general hospital in South Africa, acted as Visiting Professor and Consultant in Emergency Medicine in Taipei, and spent ten years in Southeast Asia helping to develop the specialty of emergency medicine there.

After returning to Canada in 1998, he became a driving force behind the development and spread of the Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale for use in hospital emergency departments. In fact, the CTAS triage tool he helped to develop has become the standard of care in all Canadian emergency departments and EMS services and is currently being used in eleven other countries. More recently, he has focused on establishing provincial knowledge translation, working with multiple provincial strategic clinical networks and the Alberta Clinical Pathways Steering Committee to get the best medical evidence into the hands of frontline medical professionals.

Among his many awards are the 2008 International Federation of Emergency Medicine (IFEM) Humanitarian Award for his contributions to the development of the specialty of Emergency Medicine in Taiwan and ongoing collaborations since his return to Canada; the 2010 Dr. Garnet E. Cummings Lifetime Achievement Award for “very significant long-term contributions to the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Alberta”; the 2015 Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP) Honorary Life Membership Award “in recognition of outstanding contributions and dedicated service to CAEP and Emergency Medicine in Canada”; and the 2018 Award of Distinction by the Taiwan Society of Emergency Medicine (20th anniversary celebration).

When doctors think about retirement, they hope they will be able to look back on their careers and see evidence that they made a difference in the lives of their patients, their colleagues and in their communities. A rare few will leave a lasting legacy. Dr. Bullard is among those remarkable few. He has made the world a better place, and he will leave behind not just something for others to use, but something of himself.

Dr. David B. Hogan

Dr. David Hogan has devoted his career to improving health care and quality of life for older Albertans. He has gained a well-deserved reputation as an engaged and compassionate clinician who exhibits professionalism and compassion towards his patients, their families and their caregivers. He is a national leader in geriatric medicine, and he has contributed enormously to our understanding of aging. In particular, he is sought out provincially and nationally for his expertise in dementia and geriatric syndromes.

He received his medical training from Dalhousie University, the University of Alberta and the University of Western Ontario. During a long career at the University of Calgary he was the founder of that institution’s Geriatric Medicine Division and the inaugural Brenda Strafford Foundation Chair in Geriatric Medicine (the first Canadian University Chair in the discipline). Under his leadership, the University of Calgary Brenda Strafford Centre on Aging has contributed greatly both to public understanding and to the education of health care providers and researchers regarding geriatrics, gerontology and aging.

He has played a leadership role in the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA), directing its training and capacity-building program and acting as an inaugural member of CCNA’s Research Executive Committee. The CCNA has become the premier national research hub in neurodegenerative diseases and between 2019 and 2024 will receive $44 million in funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and 11 other partners. He is currently the Calgary site Principal Investigator for the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA), a national prospective cohort study that will follow approximately 50,000 Canadians who were between the ages of 45 and 85 when recruited for twenty years. Information on their biological, medical, psychological, social, lifestyle and economic characteristics will be collected to better understand how we can all age better. Through his frequently cited research, his effective teaching, supervision, and mentorship, and his own work as a compassionate clinician, he has contributed enormously to caring for the aging population in Alberta and across the country.

Among his many awards for his clinical and research contributions to improving the care provided to older adults are the Foothills Medical Staff Association Service Recognition Award, the Alzheimer Society of Calgary Jeanne Bentley Award for Community Spirit, the AMA Long-Service Award and the RCPSC RAC 1 Prix d’excellence. More recently, he was a co-recipient of Alberta Health Services President’s Excellence Award for Outstanding Achievement in Quality Improvement for his work with the Falls Risk Management Collaborative (2017) and the President’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Innovation and Research Excellence for contributions to the Fracture Liaison Service (2018). Last year he also received an O’Brien Institute for Public Health Research Excellence Award.

Dr. Hogan has committed his professional life to geriatric medicine and to improving the quality of care provided to older Albertans and Canadians. In almost every major Canadian initiative related to aging, dementia and geriatric medicine, he has been a vital contributor and leader.

Dr. Frances L. Harley

Dr. Frances Harley was a pioneer in caring for children with kidney disease. After receiving her medical training in Ontario, Baltimore and Montreal, she came to Edmonton in 1970. Since there was no subspecialty in pediatric nephrology at the time in Canada, she joined a group of adult nephrologists in Edmonton and went on to co-found the Canadian Association of Paediatric Nephrologists (CAPN), the first and only national association for pediatric nephrologists in the country. She subsequently played a key role in establishing pediatric nephrology as an accredited medical specialty with the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

Her career in Alberta has been a series of firsts. She was the first to start a child on peritoneal dialysis; the first to start using a cycler for peritoneal dialysis in children so they could dialyze at night and go to school during the day; the first to treat a case of hemolytic uremic syndrome (commonly known as the hamburger disease) in Alberta; and the first to send infants to a large pediatric centre in the US so they could get kidney transplants. Later, her leadership and support made infant transplantation possible in Edmonton. She helped start multicentre trials in the area of pediatric hypertension, and led one in the 1990s that showed it was safe to use short-acting nifedipine, one of the few medications that could be used in children with high blood pressure. She was instrumental in establishing the Division of Pediatric Nephrology and the first residency program at the University of Alberta, among the earliest in the country, and served twice as acting chair of the Department of Pediatrics. She has been a model for women physicians and faculty, and a tireless advocate for her patients.

In addition to this pioneering work, she played a major role in improving care for children with cystic fibrosis and asthma, and has long been a passionate advocate for people with disabilities. With her personal experience of having a daughter with cerebral palsy, she has been a strong advocate for people with disabilities, fighting to ensure they have the support they need to live independently. When she retired, over the last 13 years, she began making monthly visits to Maskwacis (formerly Hobbema) to work in a clinic caring for patients with kidney disease, diabetes and hypertention, and she has engaged in extensive public health work there.

In addition to her medical work, Dr. Harley contributes to the community wherever she can. She supports the Anne Burrows Music Foundation for Young Musicians, originated and continues to support the Indigenous Woman’s Achievement in Community Leadership Award in the Banff Centre Indigenous Leadership Program, and served on the boards for the Edmonton Food Bank and the Canadian Food Bank. She and her husband, Dr. Raul Urtasun, endowed a scholarship for Argentinian artistic creators to attend the Banff Centre.

Pediatric nephrology is not a high-profile specialty. Dr. Harley has devoted herself to it not from a desire for recognition, but from a desire to serve those in need.

AMA Medal of Honour

Mr. Harold James

In 1995, the hospital in Lamont, Alberta, burned down. The monumental responsibility of negotiating the insurance claim, selecting the architect and engineering services and working with various government departments to rebuild it fell to Harold James. As CEO of a small organisation in a small town, he didn’t have access to enormous resources; nevertheless, he not only made sure that Lamont replaced what it had lost in the fire, he made it better. He imagined not just a hospital but an integrated health centre—with acute care, continuing care and assisted living all under one roof, a daring vision at a time when, in former premier Ed Stelmach’s words, “services were stovepiped in their delivery and everyone was embedded in protectionist and territorial ideals.” The success of that undertaking, which provided a model for other rural Alberta communities, exemplifies Harold James’s will, commitment and vision.

With training in laboratory technology and health services administration (received in St Lucia, Jamaica, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Michigan), Harold became administrator and CEO of Archer Memorial Hospital in Lamont, the town where he and his wife Josie made their home and raised their family for more than four decades, then he became Executive Director and CEO of Lamont Health Care Centre (LHCC). In addition to managing the construction and operation of the facilities, he was instrumental in recruiting physicians and specialists to the staff. Managing a staff including family doctors, ophthalmologists, general surgeons, orthopedic surgeons, a gynecologist/ obstetrician, ENT specialists, an internal medicine specialist, anesthesiologists, a podiatrist, podiatric surgeons, physiotherapists, dental specialists and an optometrist, in addition to provision for public health, mental health, social work, and home care, Harold has achieved his vision of comprehensive care in a small rural health centre. Due to his skilled negotiations and collaboration with different levels of government, LHCC survived the major cuts and reduced services and closures that faced many rural hospitals in the 1990s.

As CAO of the Lamont County Housing Foundation (LCHF) from 1995, he coordinated initiatives in planning and building appropriate housing and associated services for the aging residents of other towns, too, allowing them to remain in their communities, close to their families, friends and neighbors, unlike so many others who have had to be uprooted due to a lack of services and programs in their communities.

In testimonial after testimonial, people speak of Harold’s integrity, his kindness, his determination, his wisdom, and his commitment to service. For more than forty years, he has stayed true to his vision of offering compassionate and excellent care to all, especially to the vulnerable and the marginalised, and the people of his community and of this province have many reasons to be grateful for his service.

Ms. Brenda Reynolds

Brenda Reynolds is a social worker of Saulteaux heritage. Working at Gordon’s Residential School providing counselling services and educating students about abuse, she learned in 1988 of the sexual abuse of seventeen girls by a staff member. The disclosures led to the first litigated case of sexual abuse involving an Indian Residential School staff member in Saskatchewan and Canada and the largest class action settlement in Canadian history to date, as well as the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, an agreement between the Indigenous people who attended the schools, the Canadian government and churches who operated them. Since that time she has continued to work with survivors and their communities, addressing the intergenerational trauma resulting from these horrifying experiences.

In 2017, the AMA recruited Brenda to sit on its Indigenous Health Working Group, and she has been instrumental in determining how the AMA can best address the calls to action in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s report. The work of this group led to the development of AMA’s Policy Statement on Indigenous Health and the formation of the Indigenous Health Committee, on which Brenda now sits. It was established to promote and operationalize the recommendations in this policy statement, in particular the need to increase the number of Aboriginal professionals working in the health care field; ensure the retention of Aboriginal health care providers in Aboriginal communities; and provide cultural competency training for all health care professionals. Brenda has provided that training to AMA board and staff members, focusing on the history of Indigenous people in Canada, the history of Residential Schools, the Indian Residential Settlement Agreement, the legacy of the Residential Schools, intergenerational trauma, social and economic influences on health, and a brief history of Indian Hospitals. She has also presented to medical students at the University of Alberta and helped organise a group of almost fifty physicians to visit a First Nations community to learn first-hand about the challenges and the lack of resources faced by many First Nations patients.

Brenda has worked with many First Nations communities, including Alexis Nakota Sioux First Nation, Enoch First Nation, Tsuu Tina First Nation, and Hobbema (now known as Maskwacis), as well as for and with various government agencies, including Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Alberta Family and Social Services, and the Ministry for Children and Families in British Columbia. In every role that she has played, she has worked tirelessly to improve the lives, the health and the wellbeing of the people she serves, especially of Indigenous peoples.