York lauds Star writer
Honour caps big week for Torstar journalists
Toronto Star reporter and accessibility advocate Barbara Turnbull received an honorary degree from York University on Friday.
She was presented with a doctorate of laws by York’s chancellor, former Ontario chief justice and attorney general Roy McMurtry.
“It’s an extraordinary gesture,” Turnbull said of the honour.
Turnbull was18 when she was paralyzed in a shooting at a convenience store. In addition to her long journalism career, she is a noted health research advocate who established the Barbara Turnbull Foundation for Spinal Cord Research.
“It is a truism that your impact can be as big or small as you want it to be,” she told graduates of the York health faculty.
Other Star-related journalists were also honoured this week.
Ann Dowsett Johnston, who wrote the 2011Atkinson Series pieces on women and alcoholism published in the Star last November, was recognized for her work by the Renascent Foundation. Dowsett Johnston received the Peter Armstrong Community Award of Excellence for furthering the awareness of addictions as a treatable disease. “At the end of the series, my greatest wish was to have the stigma around addiction alleviated and removed,” Dowsett Johnston said. HarperCollins will publish Johnston’s book The Drinking Diaries, about the global epidemic of female alcohol abuse, next year.
Torstar Media’s weekly The Grid also earned four National Magazine Awards this week. Art director Vanessa Wyse swept the three design categories at the awards for the “Got Spunk” issue.