| Keynote | John Mighton |  |
| Aboriginal | Lorna Williams |  |
| Panel | Duncan McCue |  |
| Nella Nelson |  |
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| Sustainability | Dean Fortin |  |
| Panel | Jason Price |  |
| Rick Kool |  |
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| Emily Menzies | |
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| Featured Keynote Ticketed Lunch | Robert Bateman |  |
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John Mighton
A biography of JUMP Math's founder, Dr. John Mighton.
“John Mighton may well become the nation's math conscience. He not only knows that all children can master genuine mathematics but has repeatedly proved so with his brilliant, no-nonsense tutoring program.”
– Andrew Nikiforuk, Education Writer and award-winning author, commenting on JUMP founder John Mighton
John Mighton is a mathematician, national best-selling author, award-winning playwright, and the founder of JUMP Math (a Toronto-based nonprofit organization). He tirelessly volunteers his time and expertise at JUMP as the lead curriculum developer for the JUMP Math Student Workbooks and Teacher's Manuals. He also donates all proceeds from publications and speaking engagements to JUMP.
Dr. Mighton completed a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Toronto and is currently a Fellow of the Fields Institute for Mathematical Research and an Adjunct Professor of Mathematics at the University of Toronto.
John almost failed first-year Calculus in university, but his love of math and his belief that everyone has great mathematical potential led him to found JUMP Math as a kitchen-table tutoring group in 1998.
Some of John’s most notable achievements are his national best-selling book, “The Myth of Ability” (2003), and the recently released “The End of Ignorance” (2007), he has won several national awards including the Governor General's Literary Award for Drama, the Dora Award, the Chalmers Award and the Siminovitch Prize, and he was granted a prestigious Ashoka Fellowship as a social entrepreneur for his work in fostering numeracy and building young children's self-confidence through JUMP Math.
Dr. Lorna Williams, Lil’wat is the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Knowledge and Learning, an Assistant Professor in Aboriginal Education and Linguistics, and former Program Director of Aboriginal Education at the University of Victoria. Lorna was Director of the Aboriginal Education Enhancements Branch of the Ministry of Education for three years, Native education consultant with the Vancouver School Board and Director of Lil’wat language and culture for Ts’zil Board of Education. She is an author and film maker of education materials.
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Duncan McCue has been a reporter for CBC-TV News in Vancouver for a decade. His award-winning news and current affairs pieces are featured on CBC's flagship news show, The National. Recent honours include a RTNDA Award for Best Long Feature (Network), and his second RTNDA Diversity Award (BC Region), for his coverage of aboriginal issues.
He is also an Adjunct Professor at the UBC School of Journalism, and has taught documentary journalism to indigenous film students at Capilano College. Before becoming a journalist, Duncan studied law at UBC. He was called to the Bar in British Columbia in 1998. Duncan is Anishinaube...a member of the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation in southern Ontario. He lives with his wife and two children in Vancouver.
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Ms. Nelson is a member of the Tsawataineuk Band of the Kwakwaka'wakw Nation, and is originally from the N’amgis Nation of Alert Bay, B.C. She has been married for 36 years, and is a mother and a grandmother. Nella and her husband, Alex, have also cared for 28 First Nations young people from their home communities.
Nella has worked for the Greater Victoria School District for the past 29 years as a high school history teacher and counsellor, and as district administrator for the Aboriginal Nations Education Division. She has also taught as a sessional instructor in the University of Victoria School of Social Work, and currently is a guest lecturer for the UVic Faculty of Education.
Nella is a very active member in the First Nations community. She is the current Chair of the Camosun College First Nations Advisory Board, and Co-chair of the University of Victoria Faculty of Education Aboriginal Advisory Council. Nella is also a Board Member of the M'akola Housing Society, Hulitan Social Services and the Miskawao Development Corporation.
She is a board/advisory member of the Victoria First Nations Inter-Agency Team as well as the University of Victoria Faculty of Education and Faculty of Nursing Aboriginal Advisory, Masters of Aboriginal Counselling Program Advisory, and the Red Cross First Nations Advisory for Abuse Prevention Services.
Additional appointments are to the Greater Victoria Police Diversity Advisory Committee, Surrounded by Cedar Child & Family Services Board of Directors, the Ministry of Education Provincial Audit Program Advisory Committee, the University of Victoria Office of Community-Based Research Steering Committee and the Representative Advisory Committee on Children & Youth with Special Needs with Mary Ellen Turpell-Lafond.
Nella was also seconded by the Ministry of Education to work on a variety of curriculum teams.
Nella has been an active presenter on suicide, racism and educational issues.
In 1994, Nella received the Queen’s 125 Commemorative Medal for community service. In 1998, she was awarded the YM/YWCA Women of Distinction Award for Education, Training and Development.
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Dean Fortin is a proven community leader with a record of bringing people together to solve problems and create new opportunities.
As the Executive Director for the Burnside Gorge Community Centre for the past 17 years, Dean has worked with residents and businesses to build programs and services that have made a real difference in peoples’ lives. Dean manages over 50 employees and an annual budget of $2.2 million.
Previously, he helped establish and operated the Victoria Association for Street Kids for seven years (now the Youth Empowerment Society). He has practiced as a lawyer in both Whitehorse and in Victoria.
As a two term city councillor, Dean has participated on many committees addressing vital issues like finance and personnel, housing, social planning, and the environment. Dean has also served as the neighbourhood liaison for Fernwood, North Park and Quadra Hillside, putting issues of sustainability and livability front and centre.
As a Capital Regional District (CRD) director, Dean is chair of the Regional Housing Trust, vice-chair of the CRD Housing Corporation, and a member of the Water Board. He also sits on the CRD’s Liquid Waste, Environment, and Parks committees and has served on the CRD Roundtable on the Environment.
Dean has been a resident of Victoria for the last 30 years. Currently he lives in the Fernwood / Oaklands area with his wife Donna and their daughter Sophie.
Dr. J.M.C. Price is a former K-12 teacher, educational administrator, alternative school founder, and international development executive. Dr. Price is also the co-founder of the Harvard Association Cultivating Inter-American Democracy. He has received numerous awards for his teaching including Nipissing University’s Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching 2007, and the Trent University Spirit Award 2002. Dr. Price is a member of the Distinguished Alumni of Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario. Presently, Dr. Price is an Assistant Professor and teaches undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Victoria. Dr. Price's current courses include Mass Media and Education, Community and Culture, Aboriginal Research and Secondary Social Studies Education. Dr. Price’s has lived, worked, studied and travelled extensively in the “Third” and “Fourth” World, and tries to honour the teachings he has received from Indigenous Elders and Tradition Keepers in his scholarship and life. He is defiantly proud of his working class Scot/Irish and Aboriginal Ancestry.
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As a young person, I had strong interests in music, nature, and the range of human thought. I took these interests to the University of New Hampshire, where I majored in Zoology but had a strong interest in Philosophy and other humanities subjects. I still play the string bass. My MSc in Zoology is from the University of British Columbia, where I studied the ecology of small things that live in lake mud. My Doctorate, in Curriculum and Instruction from Brigham Young University, was given for a dissertation that looked at the relationships between what we think we know, and what we do with what we think we know.
My adult work has almost entirely been in the world of education. I’ve been a secondary school science teacher in Ucluelet Secondary School on the west coast of Vancouver Island; a biology and ecology instructor at a Douglas College in New Westminster BC; and a post-secondary instructor at both the University of Victoria and now as an Associate Professor at Royal Roads University. I’ve also worked outside the formal education system, managing the public programs department at the Royal BC Museum and developing environmental education and park interpretation programs for the BC Government.
Emily Menzies is currently working with the Ministry of Environment's new
Youth Climate Leadership Alliance as the the Climate Action Facilitator
for the Capital Regional District. She is one of ten individuals
throughout the province who work in local government offices as
facilitators between local government and communities to promote climate change initiatives in the respective local government jurisdictions.
Emily's passion for the past 14 years and counting is to create and
support hands-on experiential learning opportunities for youth to build
awareness, community and leadership skills for ecological justice and
social sustainability. Through co-creating and developing a wide variety
of many successful by-youth, for-youth programs, projects, networks and
organizations, she knows the value of sustainability education and youth
leadership first hand. With an in-depth range of hands-on experience,
academic studies and investigative travel, she has been developing her
leadership skills in group facilitation, event coordination, program
development and youth engagement since a teen herself.
Emily worked her way from 13 year old participant to youth mentor to
program staff through twelve programs of the groundbreaking and
inspirational youth environmental organization Leadership Initiative For
Earth (LIFE). Best known for its week-long LIFEboat Flotilla, an annual
voyage of 15 sailboats and 200 BC youth participating in diverse,
interactive workshops throughout the Gulf Islands, LIFE embodied
sustainability education at its best.
Since then she has been a leading youth member of Turning Point, a
installation arts-based group deconstructing the image of young women in
the media, was the Under-19 BC representative on the Sierra Youth
Coalition's Executive Committee, helped found Check Your Head: the Youth
Global Education Network, was one of twelve youth across Canada awarded a
position in Environment Canada's Polaris Network, and was a finalist for
TD Canada Trust's Scholarship for Community Leadership. Emily has been
putting her knowledge about sustainable community development and climate
change gained through her BA at UBC in International Relations and
Geography as well as her travels in Central America, Europe and Oceania to
use through fostering ecologically-sustainable development among one of
Canada's most marginalized groups of people: youth!
From 2005-2008, she worked with the Sierra Youth Coalition and Sierra
Club BC Chapter to support youth in organizing annual week long
sustainability leadership camps and in building the "Sustainable High
Schools Project." This curriculum linked, comprehensive initiative
provides students with the tools, skills and connections to work with
their peers, teachers, administration and other members of their high
school communities to assess and improve their schools' level of
ecological and social well-being.
Emily is excited about continuing to expand her role in facilitating
youth-driven climate education and action in the Greater Victoria region
with the Youth Climate Leadership Alliance!
Robert Bateman has been a keen artist and naturalist from his early days. He has always painted wildlife and nature, beginning with a representational style, moving through impressionism and cubism to abstract expressionism. In his early 30's he moved back to realism as a more suitable way to express the particularity of the planet. It is this style that has made him one of the foremost artists depicting the world of nature.
In the '70s and early '80s, Bateman's work began to receive critical acclaim and to attract an enormous following. His work is in many public and private collections, and several art museums, including the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, WY. He was commissioned by the Governor-General of Canada to create a painting as the wedding gift for HRH Prince Charles from the people of Canada. His work is also represented in the collection of HRH Prince Philip, the late Princess Grace of Monaco and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. Bateman has had many one-man museum shows throughout North America, including an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC; most of these shows have drawn record-breaking crowds.
His honours, awards and honorary doctorates are numerous: he was made Officer of the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian award in 1984. He has also been given the Rachel Carson Award (1996), the Golden Plate from the American Academy of Achievement (1998) and the Order of British Columbia (2001), and Human Rights Defender Award from Amnesty International (2007); he was named one of the 20th Century's Champions of Conservation by the U.S. National Audubon Society (1998).
Through his long association with Mill Pond Press, thousands of wildlife lovers the world over have been able to enjoy Bateman prints. Books about his life and art include The Art of Robert Bateman, The World of Robert Bateman and Robert Bateman: An Artist in Nature and Natural Worlds. Thinking Like a Mountain, an environmentalist's look at the world and Bateman's Birds brought sales of his books to over 1,000,000 copies. Three children’s books are Safari [African animals], Backyard Birds and Birds of Prey. He has also been the subject of several films and television programs. It is in honour of Bateman's contribution to art and conservation that one public and two secondary schools have been named after him. As well, he has been awarded 11 honorary doctorates.
Born in Toronto, with a degree in geography from the University of Toronto, Bateman taught high school for 20 years, including two years in Nigeria. He travelled around the world in a Land Rover in 1957/58, increasing his appreciation of cultural and natural heritage. Since leaving teaching in 1976 to paint full-time, he has travelled widely with his artist/conservationist wife Birgit to many remote natural areas.
Bateman's art reflects his commitment to ecology and preservation. Since the early 1960's, he has been an active member of naturalist and conservation organizations, now on a global scale. He has become a spokesman for many environmental and preservation issues and has used his artwork and limited edition prints in fund-raising efforts that have provided millions of dollars for these worthy causes.
He says, "I can't conceive of anything being more varied and rich and handsome than the planet Earth. And its crowning beauty is the natural world. I want to soak it up, to understand it as well as I can, and to absorb it . . . and then I'd like to put it together and express it in my painting. This is the way I want to dedicate my life.”
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