Algonquin College is honouring the recipients of its fifth-annual Alumni of Distinction Awards at a virtual gala on Thursday, September 30 (7 p.m.-8:30 p.m.).
The event will officially celebrate 10 Algonquin College alumni for their outstanding professional and community contributions, plus an employer from our campus communities who has empowered our graduates to make a difference.
This year’s honourees have demonstrated remarkable dedication to the well-being of others. They include a best-selling author, prominent federal civil servant, distinguished First Nations poet, influential journalist, and constable with a decades-long history of volunteerism and leadership, as well as dedicated health professionals and one of this city’s top chefs.
“Our 2021 Alumni of Distinction recipients are community leaders and builders who exemplify Algonquin College’s mission to transform hopes and dreams into lifelong success,” said Mark Savenkoff, Algonquin College’s Vice President, Advancement.
Media are invited to RSVP to the AC Communications team in order to view the online gala as Algonquin honours its 2021 Algonquin College Alumni of Distinction:
(OTTAWA, Sept. 27, 2021) – Ontarians overwhelmingly support proposals to expand the range of career-focused degree programs at colleges with nearly 70 per cent supporting the creation of new three-year degree programs, a new poll has found.
“We need to create even more opportunities for our learners to thrive in the 21st-century economy,” said Claude Brulé; Algonquin College’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “Expanding the degree programs at colleges will help more students to fulfil their career ambitions and acquire the specialized skills that employers are looking for.”
Every year, Algonquin College celebrates the incredible achievements of its alumni through the Alumni of Distinction Awards. These awards honour the extraordinary contributions our graduates make to the community while achieving career success. Here is a closer look at the Alumni of Distinction – Community Services Award Recipient Crystal Martin-Lapenskie. To register for the Alumni of Distinction event, click here.
President and CEO, Okpik Consulting
Social Service Worker, Class of 2013
When Crystal Martin-Lapenskie was first pondering her choice of career, social work wasn’t the first option on her mind. Her early goal was police work. Her family knew and were friends with many RCMP officers and when she expressed interest in pursuing similar work, the officers were very encouraging. “They’d say, ‘You want to be a cop, you can be a cop right here in your community,’” she says.
But life intervened in the person of her guidance counsellor at Opeongo High School near Pembroke, who reminded her that in order to graduate from Grade 12 she would have to complete 40 hours of community service. It so happened that she was heading home for a time: “I wanted to explore. I wanted to see family, reconnect and see where it was I belonged.”
Born and raised in Sanirajak in Nunavut, Martin-Lapenskie divided her time between the North and the Ottawa Valley through her teenage years. On this trip to the Arctic, she used the opportunity to do her community hours in a local school. She functioned as a teacher’s assistant, working with students her own age who were – because of differences in education in the North – in much lower grades. She helped with their schoolwork and volunteered at a hockey camp. What she learned in the process was both distressing and inspiring.
OTTAWA (September 23, 2021) – Algonquin College is pleased to announce that one of its annual Alumni of Distinction Awards is being renamed the Brian Fraser Recent Graduate Award in honour of Brian Fraser, a 2016 graduate from the Broadcasting – Radio program. Brian garnered national attention for his advocacy for blood donations before passing away at the age of 26 from leukemia in February, 2021.
Despite a career cut short, Brian achieved significant professional success as a technical producer for CFRA’s “The Morning Rush with Bill Carroll.” His passion for and extensive knowledge of professional and minor sports leagues fast tracked his aspirations to work in sports broadcasting. Embodying Algonquin College’s mission, he began to transform his hopes and dreams for success into a reality before even graduating from Algonquin College. As a student, he was already working at CFRA. His mother Sheila Fraser says, “He was still in the early stages of his career with Bill Carroll’s show. He was just getting started. Had things gone differently, with his personality and his knowledge, who knows what more he might have achieved.”
The award’s renaming serves as a lasting tribute to Brian for exemplifying the College’s values of caring and integrity. Despite the fact that he faced a serious illness, he found the strength to invest in the wellness of others and speak his truth by promoting the need for blood donations. His efforts drew national attention. For example, shortly after being diagnosed in 2019, he promoted Blood Cancer Awareness Month in a video he posted on Twitter, which garnered nearly 200,000 views. In March, 2020, in an interview on CTV News, he reminded the public of the ongoing need for blood donations despite the pandemic. Following the interview, the Canadian Blood Services website received so much traffic it crashed.
Every year, Algonquin College celebrates the incredible achievements of its alumni through the Alumni of Distinction Awards. These awards honour the extraordinary contributions our graduates make to the community while achieving career success. Here is a closer look at the Alumni of Distinction – Business recipient Michael Wood. To register for the Alumni of Distinction event, click here.
Former Chief Marketing Officer/Managing Partner, Ottawa Special Events
Travel Counsellor – Class of 1997
From playing rock ’n’ roll in stadiums across North America to appearing before the federal finance committee during the pandemic, Algonquin College Professor Michael Wood has maintained a simple philosophy.
“My whole thing is that kindness matters, and everything happens for a reason. I am really just motivated by people being happy,” said Wood, one of Algonquin’s Alumni of Distinction Award winners for 2021.
After graduating from high school, the only career pursuit that appealed to Wood was becoming a rock guitarist and touring. His parents offered encouragement but wanted him to focus on school first.
“Because there was no music program at Algonquin back then, I went into the Travel and Tourism program. I thought that would be a way to get on a cruise ship and become a musician or learn how to book tours,” said Wood, who graduated in 1997.
The Ottawa International Animation Festival, which starts today and runs until October 3, is North America’s oldest and largest animation festival, featuring thousands of entries from across the world.
This year, Algonquin College will be represented in the festival’s Canadian Student Competition with a short film by recent grads Noah Henman and Isaac Lyons. Their entry, Mammoth Gorge, is one of 23 official selections in the competition, alongside films from Sheridan College, Concordia University and Emily Carr University, among others. This is the first time in years Algonquin has had a film in the running.
Mammoth Gorge, which features Ice Age hunters seeking out a mammoth, was Henman and Lyons’ final year project. It is two minutes long and traditionally animated, meaning every cel is drawn by hand.
Since the advent of computer animation, drawing by hand is no longer the norm in the industry, but it’s a skill Henman and Lyons were grateful to learn in the three-year animation program at Algonquin. Indeed, they say the first two years of their studies were focused on fundamentals, such as drawing on paper, a skill they’d like to see more of in the industry.
Henman, who is from Colorado, and Lyons, who is from New York State, came to the program at Algonquin due to its stellar reputation. Henman heard about the program from friends he’d met online, and Lyons heard about it through Henman, who he’d met and befriended online while he was in his first year for animation at a school in New York. Lyons felt the New York program was lacking, so when Henman sent him a demo reel from Algonquin, he decided to make the switch.
Every year, Algonquin College celebrates the incredible achievements of its alumni through the Alumni of Distinction Awards. These awards honour the extraordinary contributions our graduates make to the community while achieving career success. Here is a closer look at the Alumni of Distinction – Changing Lives recipient Tom Sidney.
Councillor, Town of Renfrew
Clinic Manager, Robbie Dean Centre
Social Service Worker, Class of 2002
Tom Sidney says he doesn’t like to talk about himself or his success working with individuals and families in Renfrew County.
But as Clinical Manager for the Robbie Dean Family Counselling Centre, Councillor for the Town of Renfrew and former Senior Management for the National office of Operation Go Home, Sidney has made such notable inroads as a counsellor, politician, motivational speaker and volunteer that people want to learn about him and from him about mental health issues that can impact any family at any time.
“I like to be low-key but I’m six-foot-three, 320 pounds, bald with earrings and covered in tattoos,” he says. “It’s hard to blend in when you look like me and you’re so not a suit guy. I wear jeans and T shirts. People think I’m a biker when they first meet me. But people connect with me because I’m real. I’ve been called the Dr. Phil of Renfrew Country because I listen to people and connect with them on their level.”
Every year, Algonquin College celebrates the incredible achievements of its alumni through the Alumni of Distinction Awards. These awards honour the extraordinary contributions our graduates make to the community while achieving career success. Here is a closer look at the Alumni of Distinction – Apprenticeship Recipient Adam Vettorel.
Co-Owner and Chef, North & Navy and Cantina Gia
Cook Apprentice, Class of 2007
As a young man, Adam Vettorel’s intended goal was law school. Restaurant jobs were just what he took on to pay the bills along the way.
Vettorel began working in restaurants in high school, and continued working his way up the line while taking a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies at Carleton University and then a second degree in political science. “I loved working in kitchens, and I had a proficiency for it,” he says, “so I was able to pay my way through university without taking out a student loan.”
But as his political science course load grew heavier, Vettorel was compelled to step away from the kitchens. He had a mentor at the time, a lawyer to whom he confided that the kitchen was where his real passion was, not the law. He gave the younger man the life-changing advice he wanted to hear: if he was passionate about cooking, that is what he should pursue.
Every year, Algonquin College celebrates the incredible achievements of its alumni through the Alumni of Distinction Awards. These awards honour the extraordinary contributions our graduates make to the community while achieving career success. Here is a closer look at the Alumni of Distinction – Creative Arts & Design Recipient Joseph A. Dandurand.
Poet; Director, Kwantlen Cultural Centre
General Arts and Science (Theatre/Performing Arts), Class of 1990
Joseph Dandurand’s calendar has never been so full.
At first light, you might find the Kwantlen First Nation writer working on a film script, short stories or poems. Later in the day, he could be teaching storytelling to children in one of three different school districts or attending to his duties as the Heritage/Lands Officer, researcher and archeologist for his people. And thanks to Zoom, on any given day he might be giving virtual readings of his widely admired poetry to audiences near and far.
“What I love about Zoom,” Dandurand says, “is that one night I might be reading to people in New York and on another I’ll be reading to an audience in the Philippines. It’s great. Readings are always interesting. And on Zoom,” he notes with a light laugh, “no one can throw anything at you.”
The world has caught up with Dandurand. Today he is one of Canada’s most published and honoured writers, with – among other publications – 12 books of poetry to his credit, including I Want (Leaf Press, 2015), Hear and Foretell (Bookland Press, 2015) and The Rumor (Bookland Press, 2018). His most recent volumes are SH:LAM (The Doctor), released by Mawenzi Press in April 2019, shortlisted for the 2020 Dorothy Livesay Prize, and The East Side of It All (Harbour Publishing, 2020). The latter, set in Vancouver, was a finalist for this year’s $65,000 Griffin Poetry Prize.
Long ago, Dandurand was a troubled and aimless youth. Both his mother and father were in the Canadian military and he grew up on various bases. Over time, his troubles grew and became crippling. He dropped out of school in Grade 9, was an alcoholic at 19 and a drug addict at 26.
A proud husband and father of three children today, he doesn’t dramatize his past troubles or how he was able to recover from his addictions. He says simply that at one point, “I woke up.”
As he got back on his feet and on his way toward a new life, he aspired to become an actor and entered Algonquin College in the General Arts and Science (Theatre/Performing Arts) program. Among his classes was a creative writing course. One day he brought one of his short stories to class and read it aloud. He was stunned by the response.
“There was absolute silence until the teacher, Tom Shepherd, spoke up and said I should keep on writing,” he says. The remark was completely unexpected. “I hadn’t had that kind of encouragement before. Because I had dropped out of high school, I knew nothing about grammar. But I thought, OK, if he sees something in my work, I would keep at it.”
Being an actor remained his life’s goal, however, and after graduating with the Class of 1990, he went to study theatre and directing at the University of Ottawa. This did not go as well as he hoped. In his third year, one of his teachers told him bluntly he should be doing something else. “I wasn’t giving it my all. I just wasn’t devoted to the craft. But I’d been writing and when I graduated, it was my writing that began to open doors for me.”
Case in point: His theatre studies might not have transformed him into an actor, but what he learned served him well in writing for the stage. He has produced several plays for adults and youth, including works as playwright-in-residence for the Museum of Civilization in Hull in 1995 and for Native Earth in Toronto in 1996. Dandurand was also playwright-in-residence at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa in 2008.
His work explores the heritage of the Kwantlen people as well as his own and his family’s journey through an often unforgiving world. His evocative St. Mary’s poems (published in 2000 in the volume, looking into the eyes of my forgotten dreams) derive in part from stories his mother would tell of her time at a residential school near Mission, B.C. SH:LAM explores the experience of the Kwantlen people as they declined from a thriving West Coast culture to the approximately three hundred who survive today in the wake of smallpox epidemics that wiped out 80 per cent of their people. The Toronto Star hailed SH:LAM as a collection of “powerful visionary parables of suffering, redemption and retribution.”
Dandurand describes himself simply as a storyteller. “I teach my kids that each of us has a gift,” he says. “I believe that my gift is to tell stories.” He does so through his poems as well as his contributions to a long list of anthologies. He’s happy to explore new genres as opportunities arise. His current project is the script for a children’s film. He says he has maintained a routine for many years of rising at 5 a.m. to begin his writing. If he’s driven to write short stories, he might produce one story a day; if poetry is his priority, he might create one or two poems a day.
“I’m always writing something,” he says. “And as I’m finishing one project, I’m already thinking of the next one. It’s a constant process.”
For more details and information about the Alumni of Distinction event, visit our website.
Every year, Algonquin College celebrates the incredible achievements of its alumni through the Alumni of Distinction Awards. These awards honour the extraordinary contributions our graduates make to the community while achieving career success. Here is a closer look at the Alumni of Distinction – Employer of the Year Recipient Mercury Filmworks.
Working for Mercury Filmworks is a career goal for many Canadian animators attracted by the calibre of the studio’s award-winning work – both its original productions and those produced for the world’s top entertainment companies, including Disney, Netflix, Amazon, Universal, Nickelodeon, DreamWorks, 20th Century Fox, Sony and Warner Bros.
“The quality of the work produced here at Mercury is what attracts some of the best talent in the industry,” says David Keneford, Chief Talent Officer.
Weldon Poapst, Recruitment Coordinator with Mercury Filmworks and a faculty member at Algonquin College, echoes that statement, saying, “Ask any animator about Mercury and they will attest to its high-quality work.”
Mercury’s corporate culture has also earned it the distinction of being named one of the Best Offices in Ottawa in 2020 by the Ottawa Business Journal. Keneford says continuing enhancements of this culture will be an important component of the company’s immediate future.
“I think our next evolution will be building on what we have, heightening our leadership skills and supporting a shift to even stronger coaching culture,” he says. “We have the perfect environment to provide a long-term career path for our employees.”
Mercury Filmworks was founded in Vancouver 1997 by Clint Eland, who serves today as Chief Executive Officer. As its reputation in the industry grew, the company established a second studio in Toronto in 2000 and four years later moved its headquarters to Ottawa, which has become a dynamic and rapidly growing hub of the animation industry. In the years since, millions of children and their parents have seen the studio’s entertainment projects, most of them produced in Ottawa.
Mercury Filmworks productions include:
• Emmy, BAFTA and Annie Award-winning Hilda (2018) and Kid Cosmic (2020), both for Netflix
• Three-time Emmy Award, and Annie Award-winner Rapunzels’ Tangled Adventure (2017–2020), the two-time Emmy-nominated The Lion Guard (2016–2020), Emmy Award-winning heritage Mickey Mouse shorts (2013-2020), Emmy and Annie Award-winning Jake & the Neverland Pirates (2011-2016), Emmy and Annie Award-winning Wander Over Yonder (2013-2016), Fish Hooks (2010-2014), and Primetime Emmy-nominated Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil (2010-2012), all for Disney
• Emmy Award-nominated If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (2015), for Amazon, and
• Mattel’s Hot Wheels: The Origin of Awesome (2014).
Other productions include Jimmy Two Shoes (2009-2011), Stella & Sam (2011, 2012), Gerald McBoing Boing (2005-2007), The Power Puff Girls Movie (2002), Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), and the Curious George (2006) movie.
It is an astounding body of work to have been created in just a few years, and Poapst says Mercury is always looking for talent with the drive, technical knowledge and work ethic to meet its clients’ needs. “The work ethic is something that is emphasized in schools alongside the skills,” he says. “You have to have it to make a career in this field.”
Once accepted as members of the Mercury team, which numbers over 350 employees, new hires begin to benefit from the company’s mentorship program. “We take what they have been taught and build on it with them,” Poapst says. “We take them up a notch. This is not a job, it’s a career, and to build a career you need to be in a learning environment.”
Mercury draws animators from many sources but it has a close relationship with and employs dozens of alumni from Algonquin College.
In addition to his work with Mercury, Poapst has been teaching at the College since 2005, bringing his animation skills and knowledge of daily life as an industry professional to Algonquin’s students. “When I teach the business and animation course for third-year students, my goal is to explain the real world,” he says.
Mercury participates on the Animation Program Advisory Committee (PAC) which keeps the College in the loop about what the industry needs and expects from young animators.
In January, the company established an annual award for a graduating student from the College’s Film and Media Production program. The five-year commitment has an annual value of $5,000 and honours the memory of former Mercury Filmworks employee and Algonquin College alumnus Kevin Kocvar.
The company has also been providing bursaries and internships for Algonquin College students for over a decade. “We bring on between 12 and 16 interns every year,” says Keneford, “and we sponsor a bursary called the Triple Threat Award, which are examples of how we are always mentoring and working with students.”
He adds that interns are put through everything Mercury would expect of any animator. “They learn first-hand about the high bar we require of our people and the collaborative working culture at Mercury, where people learn from each other and challenge one another to achieve more than they might have thought possible.”
Even during the pandemic, Mercury Filmworks has been aggressively hiring and the expectation is it will continue to do so in the months ahead. Over the years, more than 100 Algonquin College graduates have been hired by the company.
“We have experienced significant growth since February 2020,” says Keneford, “and the demand should continue. There are new seasons to produce, new shows for various studios and work we’re developing in-house, and we’re also doing shorts and commercials. We anticipate many opportunities for growth and development for people who want to work with Mercury for years to come. We are not just a great place to start a career in animation, we’re a great place to develop a long and rewarding career in the industry.”
For more details and information about the Alumni of Distinction event, visit our website.
