Goldbloom Awards 2009

On September 11th and 12th, 2009, the QCGN held its Members’ Convention and Annual General Meeting in conjunction with the festivities surrounding the 40th anniversary of the Official Languages Act, which coincided with the launch of the 15th anniversary year of the Network.

A Premiere! Of course the crowning event of the weekend was the QCGN’s Community Celebration Evening and the ceremony to hand out the first-ever Sheila and Victor Goldbloom Distinguished Community Service Awards. The evening, emceed by CBC Radio’s Bernard St-Laurent, included kudos for Dr. and Mrs. Goldbloom as well as this year’s laureates of the award: Language and equality right activist Casper Bloom (award handed out by Mr. Nicholas Kasirer); Townships health-care advocate Marjorie Goodfellow (James Carter); and researcher Jack Jedwab, Executive-Director of the Association of Canadian Studies (Herbert Marx).

Thanks to our Blue Ribbon Panel of judges which included this year: BCP Communications President and Quebec's newly appointed delegate-general to New York City Mr. John Parisella, former McGill Chancellor Mrs. Gretta Chambers, Senator David Angus and former editor of The Gazette Mr. Norman Webster. We were glad that Mr. Parisella and Mr. Webster were able to acknowledge the winners with us that night.

During the two-day convention, which was attended by some 200 members, community partners and government stakeholders, the contributions of English-speaking Quebec to Quebec and Canadian society were celebrated by a number of special guests including provincial Justice Minister Kathleen Weil, who was there to represent Premier Jean Charest and the government of Quebec; Glengarry-Prescott-Russell MP Pierre Lemieux, who was on hand to represent Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Official Languages Minister James Moore; former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, who spoke on behalf of Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal Party; former Commissionner of Official Languages Mr. Maxwell Yalden (1977-1984) and Vice-Chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Official Languages, Mr. Yvon Godin.

On hand for the opening ceremony of the convention were the Commissioner of Official Languages Mr. Graham Fraser; the Honourable Maria Chaput, Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Official Languages; Mr. Richard Nadeau, MP for Gatineau and member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Official Languages; Mr. Marcel Proulx, MP for Hull-Aylmer; Mrs. Charlotte L’Écuyer, MP for Pontiac and representing Mr. Norman MacMillan, Minister responsible for the Outaouais region and MP for Papineau; and Mr. Noel Burke, Dean of Concordia’s School of Extended Learning.