Anti-poverty activist joins Order of Canada
After four decades of fighting against the establishment, it felt strange, Jean Swanson said, to be celebrated by it.
Swanson, a longtime Vancouver anti-poverty activist who is running for city council, was invested into the Order of Canada Friday by Gov. Gen. David Johnston during a ceremony in Ottawa. Her appointment as a member of the Order of Canada was announced last year.
Reached by phone Friday shortly after the ceremony at Rideau Hall, the Governor General’s official residence, Swanson said the “pomp and ceremony” of the occasion felt unfamiliar to someone who has spent so much of her life in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
“It’s a little higher echelon than I’m used to hanging out with, that’s for sure,” Swanson said, adding she was pleased to sit beside the “amazing” Tanya Tagaq, a fellow Order of Canada inductee and award-winning Inuk throat singer from Nunavut, during the ceremony. Swanson said Tagaq “helped get me through the whole thing.”
Swanson’s mission to improve the lives of Vancouver’s poor led her to announce her candidacy for Vancouver city council in October’s byelection to fill the seat vacated by the departure of Vision Coun. Geoff Meggs.
While in Ottawa on Friday, Swanson hoped to visit that city’s recently announced first supervised drug injection site, although she didn’t know if she would have enough time: she had to be back in Vancouver for a Saturday campaign rally at the Russian Hall in Strathcona.