Day honours Lincoln Alexander

(Update)

He was known as Hamilton’s greatest citizen. But the 24th Lieutenant Governor of Ontario preferred to be known simply, as “linc”. Lincoln MacAuley Alexander, would have been 92 Tuesday. To mark the date of his birth, there was a slightly different day of celebration at Queen’s Park. Ontario’s first, official “Lincoln Alexander Day”.

Lincoln Alexander would have liked this. An accolade that was straight forward, and to the point.

Lieutenant Governor David Onley: “The very first, Lincoln Alexander Day. He taught us first and foremost to be of good heart, and to reach for good, if not great things.”

And that inspiration brought three young women, from three very different backgrounds together at Queen’s Park Tuesday as this year’s recipients, of the Lincoln Alexander Awards.

Saba Oji came from Iran to Waterloo. Speaking almost no English, she inspired her high school peers, to see each other with a different perspective: “If we know about their background just a little, we stop having that stigma or having that difference between us. we start talking to each other.”

Sometimes that conversation happens within a neighbourhood. And in the case of one notorious Toronto neighbourhood it was desperately needed. And so, Talisha Ramsaroop stepped up: “I just feel like as long as that stigma exists, youth from that community will always feel the need to you know, never try to hard because everybody’s just telling them you know, you’re a criminal, you’re a criminal, so I think that’s an important part of that eliminating that stigma.”

The Jane-Finch corridor has earned a reputation as a bad neighbourhood. A neighbourhood of violence, drugs and gangs. It’s a reputation that Talisha says, it doesn’t deserve.

And it’s not just big cities but small nations that must fight that fight like the Dokis First Nation, where Nathalie Restoule lives. On the banks of the French River, half-way between North Bay and Sudbury, Nathalie feels that sometimes her isolated community loses sight of it’s own value: “Where I am, I was always put down and I wanted to show that we are beautiful people, and we have a purpose.”