Gallery of Distinction
This year, seven people are being honoured for their outstanding and lasting contributions in sports, medicine, child care, community building, advocacy, culture and the arts. Meet the inductees:
This year’s cavalcade of civic admirables, our Hamilton Gallery of Distinction inductees for 2018, has been announced, and they cover a broad range of Hamilton experience and leadership from sports, medicine, child care and community building to advocacy, culture and the arts.
The inductees will be honoured at the 35th annual Gallery of Distinction gala dinner and induction ceremony on Tuesday,
Nov. 13, and they are: Hilda May Binns, Robert and Margaret Carr, Dr. Jean Clinton, Sandra Bald Jones, Dr. David Levy and Yvonne Maracle.
Following are brief biographies:
Hilda May Binns, an inspirational speaker to youth and others, was Canada’s first Paralympic gold medallist, winning in Tel Aviv in 1968. Competing in track and field and swimming, she won 58 medals in four years, including six Paralympic medals and 18 Parapan American Games medals. As a girl, she lost the use of her legs to polio. She worked hard to develop great upper body strength. Robert and Margaret Carr have spent decades volunteering, chiefly for Out of the Cold and for community associations (Kirkendall and North Hamilton), even as they plied successful careers, she as a nurse and arts fundraiser, he as an engineer and president of Gypsum Technologies. They’ve also been active in philanthropy and advocacy for heritage, the arts, redevelopment and health care. Dr. Jean Clinton, professor of psychiatry and behavioural neurosciences at McMaster University and on staff at McMaster Children’s Hospital, has devoted her career to championing optimum conditions of life for children. She was among the first to recognize the link between children’s emotional and cognitive development and has engaged with early years child-care initiatives at every level. Sandra Bald Jones, prestigious Atholl Clasp winner, is a pre-eminent Highland dancer. A two-time world champion, Jones opened a studio in Hamilton, which quickly produced future world champions. Her Schiehallion
Dancers have performed globally, she’s choreographed the Hamilton Tattoo, and she oversaw the Canadian Highland Dance Team that performed at the Edinburgh Military Tattoo in 2002. Dr. David Levy, leading figure in Canadian sports medicine, started Southern Ontario’s first primary-care sport medicine practice, here in Hamilton. For decades he was medical director for the Tiger-Cats and for the Toronto Rock lacrosse team. He’s been physician for McMaster and Mohawk teams. In 1978 he founded the McMaster Athletic Injury Clinic, which grew into the present sports injury and rehab centre.
Yvonne Maracle, gifted photographer and painter, established the National Indian/Inuit Photographers’ Association and the first gallery solely dedicated to showing the work of Indigenous photographers. As a community worker, she has also helped Indigenous Hamiltonians access better housing and health services through her service on boards and at agencies. She’s been an invaluable leader in the community.
The gala dinner will be at Michelangelo’s Events and Conference Centre. For tickets to the Nov. 13 gala, call 905-522-1151, ext. 100. For more, hamiltongalleryofdistinction.ca.