“My health is my wealth. My children are my greatest accomplishment. My family keeps me focused, grounded and inspired.”
Before my struggle for equal treatment of my children by York Region District School Board officials, which involved launching a human rights complaint about discrimination my son faced at his high school, this is how I defined myself to strangers.
Before my husband Garth and I had to explain to our children that good and decent people everywhere believe we are all equal, before God and the law, the most stressful thing we had to deal with was balancing soccer, baseball, basketball and swimming, church, jobs and family.
Before we lost hope that our children’s school, board management, and our trustees would be there to ensure a healthy learning environment, our days and nights were no different than any readers’ with growing families.
Last week, the Toronto Star, who has been one of our strongest champions in mining for truth since the darkest days of this fight for fairness, inexplicably ran an opinion piece by Stewart Elgie and Allyson Harrison, the children of trustee Nancy Elgie, that suggested there was another side to the racism faced in this journey we are on.
That in 2017, families of ethnic, racial and religious minorities have had to band together for a common cause, thought by many to have been won in the 1960s, is difficult enough to explain to our children. To suggest the idea that there are mitigating, explainable counterbalances to public acts of discrimination by elected officials is reprehensible.
I am the person Nancy Elgie was referring to when she said the racist slur. She privately apologized to me after an investigation. I accepted it on behalf of my family and I said so, to very public coverage. That acceptance should not, however, be seen as an endorsement of her continued standing as an elected official at the school board.
Her continuance on a board that is being investigated for fostering systemic racism is symbolic of the “entrenched privilege” being practiced under the troubled leadership of Director J. Philip Parappally.
Parents looking to Education Minister Mitzie Hunter and new board chair Loralea Carruthers, will never invest hope in change, while the two most symbolic leaders of an old and discriminating demagogy cling to their seats and their privileges.
I want it to go back to the days when we would talk about math and soccer and crushes over dinner. When we could go to work without worry, that the phone call coming in won’t be one of children’s tears from a school. But we won’t go back there, until change — real and hopeful change — happens at the school board.
We owe it to the families who are still afraid, like we were, at what people would think of them for calling out bigots in 2017. Change starts at the top, the leadership has to be refreshed and we intend to see it though for my kids and yours.
Charline Grant is a Vaughan-based real estate professional. Together with her management consultant husband Garth Bobb, they are raising their children in the York Region public school system. When not at soccer, basketball, baseball, swimming or church, her family devotes their time to causes that are important to their community.
Charline Grant is a Vaughan-based real estate professional. Together with her management consultant husband Garth Bobb, they are raising their children in the York Region public school system. When not at soccer, basketball, baseball, swimming or church, her family devotes their time to causes that are important to their community.
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