The annual Janusz Korczak Medal and Statuette awards ceremony took place on January 14, 2025, at the Government House in Victoria, hosted by Her Honour Janet Austin, Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia. This event celebrated outstanding contributions to children’s rights advocacy and holistic child well-being.

The ceremony honored the Campbell River Early Years Council, represented by Anne Boyd, Marlene Inrig, Cheryl Jordan, Joyce McMann, and Brenda Wagman, as the recipients of the 2024 Janusz Korczak Medal for Children’s Rights Advocacy. Additionally, Dr. Dana Brynelsen, OBC, was awarded the 2024 Janusz Korczak Statuette for her lifetime achievements in promoting a holistic approach to child well-being and advocacy.

The event featured opening remarks from Her Honour Janet Austin, followed by contributions from Aleksandra Kucy, Consul General of Poland in Vancouver, Jerry Nussbaum, President of the Janusz Korczak Association of Canada, and Dr. Jennifer Charlesworth, BC Representative for Children and Youth.

The medal was presented by Dr. Anton Grunfeld and Dr. Nancy Bell to the members of the Campbell River Early Years Council, who then shared remarks about their work and dedication to children’s rights. The statuette was presented to Dr. Dana Brynelsen by Ron Friesen and Dr. Christine Loock, after which Dr. Brynelsen expressed her gratitude and reflected on her career and mission.

The ceremony concluded with a warm round of applause for all the recipients, and attendees were invited to enjoy a reception to continue celebrating this meaningful occasion.

Dr. Dana Brynelsen’s remarks

I acknowledge and thank the Lkwungen People, also known as the Songhees and the Esquimalt First Nations communities, past, present and future, for their stewardship, care and leadership on these lands.

Lieutenant Governor Janet Austin, members of the Janusz Korczak Association of Canada, colleagues and friends. I would like to say a few words in regard to Dr. Korczak, and our work in disability.  It is a great honour to be recognized with this award, and through this to be associated with the great Dr. Janusz Korczak. He was a true hero. His life and his contributions during his life have had broad and significant international impact in the area of child rights.  His beliefs about the value of each individual child, a person in their own right, deserving of love and respect led to the creation of the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child, 1990. That Declaration inspired the development of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) followed by the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007). All were highly influential to our work with the Infant Development Program of BC.

When I first met Jerry Nussbaum last fall and was told of this honour, I was not familiar with Dr. Korczak and his work. I was unaware that his life was the inspiration for international Child Rights and directly influenced much of our work here in BC. It has been very rewarding to learn more of this through his biography The King of Children. I am humbled that our work is now linked to this heroic life. We need heroes to inspire, to look up to when life seems dark and we are in despair.

And certainly for children with disability and their families, for most of the last century, life was dark. The eugenics movement which fueled the Holocaust, in which Dr. Korczak and the children in his care perished, has deep roots in Canada. Eugenics is the false science of heredity, and became a significant social movement in Canada. Poverty and crime conflated with intellectual disability, children with disabilities and their families were not welcome in the community. Children with intellectual disability or significant physical disability were often institutionalized, many at birth. Parents who kept their child at home faced a life of isolation, of stigma.

After WW2 in North America, parents became aware of the Holocaust and the atrocities toward many minorities, including disabled persons. They started to work together for reforms. In BC, the first public school in Canada, for children with intellectual disability, funded by a school board, opened in Vancouver in 1961 as a result of parent pressure. Children with intellectual disability for the first time were allowed by law to attend a public school. This was followed by the creation of small parent run preschool programs and in 1972 the first Infant Program started, inspired by the birth in 1969 of Pamela Vickers, a baby with Down syndrome. Pat Vickers, Pamela’s mother became aware of the lack of service for infants and families, and aware as well of how her daughter’s life was devalued by others. She worked to start the first home based service for parents of infants with disability, the prototype of the Infant Development Program.

David Vickers, a lawyer and Pamela’s father convinced Jean Chretien in 1982 to include disability into the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Canada was the first democracy in the Commonwealth to give constitutional status to the equality rights of persons with intellectual and physical disabilities.

Rights based work, growing out of child rights, and disability rights was also driving concerns for rights for other groups. And in 2007, as a Supreme Court Judge in BC, David ruled in favour of the T’silqotin People, in the Williams decision, a landmark case establishing Aboriginal rights and title. When we consider heroes that inspire let’s include Pamela Vickers, that baby with Down syndrome whose birth and life, sparked enormous change for thousands of other children and families.

Our work in disability led to many reforms for children and families. The Infant Development Program has served well over 100,000 children since inception, many parents involved in establishing these services at the community level have gone on to leadership roles and have altered the face of disability services provincially and nationally. These parents are heroes too and they inspire us, with their work and dedication, parents who fought for rights for their sons and daughters that are taken for granted by others.

These rights, like the rights Dr. Korczak gave his life to defend, include the right to be respected for who you are, that regardless of ability or disability you have the right to be regarded as a child, as a person and allowed to be whatever you might be. And our task as a community, as a society is to open doors for you, to welcome you, to include you and to change the way we are and our environments, in order for you to thrive.

It can be easy to look at our advancements in services in BC and believe that we continue to move toward expanding and advancing the rights of minority groups, children, of persons with disability, of Indigenous Peoples. But how quickly our gains are eroded and lost when our values and attitudes shift. When basic human rights are overlooked, unrecognized, when child rights are not acknowledged, or challenged.

The legacy of Janusz Korczak and of our local heroes, families like the Vickers, must be to ensure history does not repeat itself, that progress is maintained and strengthened for those in our society who are most vulnerable. We have our work cut out for us.

Thank you again so much for this great honour in Dr. Korczak’s name. And thank you for all you do to stand up, and speak out for children.

Dana Brynelsen, OBC, LLD (Hon)