Inspirational Men & Woman

The spouse was looking for truck accessories and there were some magazines in the shop and the kid who was with us, showed us this magazine with Karen Kain on it.  I guessed it must be the ballerina outfit that caught her eyes since she just started taking dancing class herself.

Well, Karen Kain is one of Canada’s most famous pricipal ballerinas, trained at the National Ballet Company from 1962 and gradated from NBC in 1969.  Her debut was Swan Queen in Swan Lake and we all know what a difficult dance/show Swan Lake is.  She also won the women’s silver medal at Moscow International Ballet competition in 1973.

Karen retired after 28 yrs of dancing and became the first Canadian to recieve the Cartier Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996.  An officer of the Order of Canada, she was the promoted to Companion of Order in 1991.  She also won the International Emmy Award in 1999.  and founding president of Dancer Transition Resource Centre which assists dancers with a transition to a new career after dance.  And in 2005 she then became the artistic director for our own NBC.

Very inspiring i must say - I don’t hope for kind of achievement from my own daughter but if she can be 10% of what Karen Kain had achieved .. i would be a very proud mother.

Nope.. i don’t know her.. but i just read about her..  and therefore i’ve decided to write about her on my blog.  Because woman like that are definitely hard to come by then .. and even now.  Alice saved $100 not to get  term life insurance from her secretarial job but to do something special for Vancouver.   She passed away in 1944 .. therefore one can imagine .. the value of $1000 at that time.. was a huge thing.

Alice Mackay wanted to help homeless women trapped in a cyle of poverty.  And you know what..???  her $1000 transformed into $800 million.  Now isn’t that awesome..!!   Apparently, her lawyer was a man of great vision.  Mr Vandusen also a known for being a philanthropist understood the potential of building a permanent endowment that could benefit many charitable activities.

By 1943, he had overseen the establishmenet and incorporation of the Vancouver Foundation as Alice wanted.  However at the time of Alice death in 1944, the Vancouver Foundation was still nothing yet, it was no more than a legal entity with virtually no capital.  Inspired by Alice’s geneous gift after her death, VanDusen encouraged nine of his friends to match his gift of $10K and the rest is history.

I’m truly in awe and with lots of respect for women like Alcie Mackay.. i hope that i can do the same .. if not more .. like Alice Mackay.

Chiam See Tong is no stranger to Singaporeans or to those living in the neighboring countries.   Not because of promotional items but because he is very courageous in my humble opinion.  He was and still is the only standing opposition party of the one party system in the political arena.  Born in 1935 - the same year as my own mother, Chiam See Tong had a different fate than my mom.  He is definitely someone i admire and salute many times, even though sometimes he makes a fool of himself in Parliament for the things he said.  But I admire him because he was brave enough .. and had thus far stay out of the radar of the PAP while most opposition parties were either sued for defamation by the PAP or some were bullied so bad .. they had to leave the country.  But Chiam See Tong stuck around for a long, long time and even though .. i don’t consider him as the strongest opponent, he is still the only long standing opponent.

I grew up watching Sesame Streets, although some might think that i only think of finding the diet pills that work , since I’m constantly fighting about my weight.  But that’s not true.. Sesame Street was my first love .. and will always be.  And it’s people like Kevin Clash that made it possible for kids from all over the world learn stuff over television .. albeit it was black and white then.

Kevin Clash is an Emmy-award-winning performer and producer with dozens of TV and film credits to his name, but he’s far better known as a furry red monster. Clash is the puppeteer and the voice behind Elmo, one of the most popular characters on the seminal children’s television show Sesame Street, which this week marks its 40th anniversary with a series of special episodes and a two-disc DVD set, Sesame Street: 40 Years of Sunny Days. Clash spoke to TIME about becoming Elmo, the show’s many celebrity guests and why even grown-ups need a Sesame Street fix once in a while.

I cannot find any pictures of Josephine Dauphinee.. but one thing for sure.. is she is one very special lady..  who was born in 1875 - maybe that was the reason why i can’t find a picture of her.  Anyhow.. this awesome lady with a big and generous heart was the first teacher in Canada.. to provide special classes for the mentally challenged children - children that ppl referred to as feeble mind and without any belly fat .  She was a trained nurse and was 33 yrs old.. when she started her teaching.  She was awarded the highest award from the BC Teachers’ Federation .. after she retired .. and by then.. the number of these special classes had increased much more..  to help these children.  She was more than a teacher of course.. and was  the founder of the Vancouver Business and Professional W omen’s club.  Definitely an inspiration to me.

Looking for weight loss pills and a weight loss reference book ended up picking a book by Gabrielle Roy of Enchantment and Sorrow and autobiography  of herself.   It was this book that lead me to knowing this awesome woman who died in 1983.

She began her career during the Depression when she secured a teaching position in her hometown in 1930 .. she is even older than my mom.  A woman at that time having a teaching position is pretty rare from what i understand.  Anyhow.. in 1937, she travelled to Europe to study drama and try her hand in writing.  She had two pieces publicshed in French journal.

Returning to Montreal in 1939, she was a freelance writer until her first novel Bonheur d’occasion, which started out as a newspaper article and ended up being an over 800 page novel, it was published in 1945.  She won the Prix Femina from France for this novel and the rest is as they said.. history.  Her autobiography was actually published a year after her death.  What a pity eh!

I was visiting New York one year when i was helping a friend in her business of tile flooring , when i came across Cathleen Synge Morawets and realised that she was from Toronto, Ontario.  What caught my interest was that she was the first woman director of the Courant Institute at New York University in 1984 and the second woman president of the American Mathematical Society in 1995 and was awarded the Kriger - Nelson Award from the Canadian Mathematical Society.

At that time.. i was very young then.. and had a good friend from Canada.. and I myself.. didn’t think that i would migrate to Canada.. in my later years.  So now that I am revisiting the people who inspires me..  Cathleen Morawetz was one of them. Why..?? because it was woman like her .. that made me realized that i can be what i want..  because they had pave the way for woman from the future.