Chris White, along with Canadian Poet Laureate George Elliott Clarke and Shelley Hamilton, is delving into his Black, Native and Nova Scotian roots to create songs and poems that address and celebrate this largely unacknowledged aspect of Canadian history and culture. Together, they have performed and recorded this material in Halifax and Toronto, and have […]
Michael Etherington has family roots and heritage from James Bay; he is a proud representative of the Omushkego-Cree. Michael’s late great-aunt was the oldest residential school attendee in Canada at 111 years of age, attending St. Anne’s in Fort Albany, Ont.; in 2008 she was one of four invited attendees to hear Stephen Harper’s formal […]
Laureen (Blu) Waters is a member of the Metis Nation of Ontario. Her family is from Big River Saskatchewan, Star Blanket Reserve and Bra’dor Lake, Eskasoni First Nations, Cape Breton Nova Scotia. Blu grew up with her grandmother and learned about traditional medicines performing extractions, healing, and taking of care of the sick. At 10 […]
Kim Wheatley is an Ojibwe Anishinaabe Grandmother from Shawanaga First Nation Reserve who carries the spirit name Head or Leader of the Fireflower and who is Turtle Clan. She has appeared on TV, radio and in many news articles connected to her passion for Indigenous Knowledge sharing. Kim has worked with over 34 First Nation […]
Since 2015, Michael Levitt has served as a Member of Parliament in Canada’s House of Commons, representing the Toronto riding of York-Centre. As an MP, he has worked to represent his riding, one of the most diverse in Canada, as well as serving as a voice for Human Rights on the international stage. In March […]
Dr. Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux is the first Indigenous Chair for Truth and Reconciliation on behalf of Lakehead University, Thunder Bay and Orillia. Her research and academic writing is directed towards understanding the continuing transmission of unresolved intergenerational trauma and grief, primarily within the Indigenous community of Canada. We were honoured to have her as our keynote […]
Born in the small town of Klimontov, Poland in 1938, Saul was only an infant when Europe transformed into a war zone. He was born into a loving family: his father was a banker, his mother was a homemaker, and he had two older brothers. Saul remembers very little of this briefly relatively peaceful life […]
Mr. Scott Masters and the Crestwood Social Studies Department have been working on compiling a Historical Archive for several years now. This initiative came into being because of the numerous World War Two Veterans and Holocaust Survivors that have spoken to Mr. Masters’ students. Through their generosity and to make sure that their memories are […]
Nayani Thiyagarajah is a speaker and community activist and a director and a producer, a daughter of the Yalpanam-Tamil diaspora, as well as a writer, performance artist, and filmmaker. She has worked extensively with multiple arts-based organizations and performance groups across Toronto, including Manifesto Community Projects, ArtReach Toronto, b.current Performing Arts, and Schools Without Borders. She […]
Rosemary McCarney is President and CEO of Plan International Canada Inc. (Plan Canada), an international and humanitarian development organization. Founded as Foster Parents Plan, this NGO now works in more than 45 developing countries helping children and their families achieve lasting improvements in their lives. That includes the notable “Because I am a Girl” campaign. […]
Shaun Boothe is a fixture in the Toronto hip hop community, one we have been proud to host a number of times at Crestwood. He first visited The CHC classes in 2011, where he showed Mr. Masters’ and Mr. Hawkins’ classes an alternative approach to modern history, using hip hop as a means to teach […]
Gerda Frieberg was born in Upper Silesia, Poland in 1925. In October 1939, her father was taken away. In 1940, Gerda, her mother, and sister were deported to the Jaworzno Ghetto. In 1942, she was sent to the Oberaltstadt concentration camp, where her sister was interned. Her mother joined them in 1943. Gerda worked in […]
Judy Cohen is a Holocaust survivor from Hungary. She was born on September 17th, 1928 in the city of Debrecen. Judy was the youngest in a family of 7 children. Her early life was a good one, full of promise and possibility, until she and her family were caught up in the terrible events unfolding […]
Sally Wasserman is the only child survivor of the Dambrowa ghetto, which was located in southern Poland, not too far from Auschwitz-Birkenau. When her family was forced into the ghetto, her mother encountered Mr. Turken, a man who did work for the authorities in the ghetto. He and his wife agreed to take Sally in […]
Hedy Bohm grew up in prewar Romania, in a region that later came under Hungarian control. As the war escalated, she and her family increasingly came under the influence of the Nazis, and the family was deported to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944. Hedy was able to survive Auschwitz-Birkenau for three months; at that […]
Crestwood Preparatory College is proud to congratulate Scott Masters for his selection as one of the seven recipients for the 2012 Governor General’s History Awards for Excellence in Teaching. A past recipient of The Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Baillie Award for excellence in Secondary School Teaching (as nominated by former […]
Pardeep Singh Nagra is a Canadian athlete and human rights activist. He came to speak to Mr. Masters’ History 10 class in the spring of 2010 and again in 2011, which he followed up with an interview by student representatives from the YARRD club. Pardeep’s story is an inspirational one; he came to Canada from […]
Pinchas Gutter was born in Lodz and was 7 years old when the war broke out. After his father was brutally beaten by Nazis in Lodz, he fled with his family to what they thought was safety in Warsaw. From there, Pinchas and his family were incarcerated in the Warsaw Ghetto for three and a […]
Bill Glied grew up in Serbia, enjoying a good life within his community. The family had a prosperous business, and Bill had many friends – and he was a skilled goalie on his soccer team. In April, 1944, that all changed: Bill was deported along with his entire family from his home town of Subotica, […]
George Brady was living a quiet and comfortable life in Czechoslovakia in the period before the war. With the arrival of the Nazis however, his circumstances changed dramatically. He and his family were subjected to the various degrees of Nazi brutality and they found themselves ostracized from their community. George’s mother and father were arrested […]
Sandra Ortega was born March 29, 1937 in Baltimore, Maryland. She grew up against the backdrop of 1950s America, when the Jim Crow Laws governed life all across the south, a truth that was in evidence in her own city of Baltimore, where segregation ran deep. From an early age Sandra learned the virtue of […]