Thauberger, Althea, 1970- : Althea Thauberger is a Canadian visual artist, filmmaker and educator. Althea was born in 1970 in Saskatoon. She obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography at Concordia University in 2000 and went on to complete her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Victoria in 2002. In 2009-2010, she studied at the European Graduate School as a PhD candidate. She currently lives and works in Vancouver, where she is an assistant professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia.
Before Thauberger's professorship at University of British Columbia, she had taught at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Simon Fraser University, and University of Victoria as a sessional instructor, and was invited to teach at Akademie výtvarných umeni v Praze (Academy of Fine Arts, Prague) as a guest professor, and at Concordia University as a visiting professor.
"Her work engages relational practices rooted in sustained collaborations with groups or communities through social, theatrical and textual processes that often operate outside the studio/gallery environment. Her varied research-centric projects have taken her to military base, remote societies and institutional spaces that result in performances, films, videos, audio recordings and books, and involve provocative reflections of social, political, institutional and aesthetic power relations. Her recent projects involve an extended engagement with the sites of their production in order to trace broader social and ideological histories." (Wikipedia).
She has received national and international praise for her conceptual-based projects that combine elements of performance with photography, film and video. She has presented video installations in solo exhibitions in Montréal, New York, California, and Vancouver. She has also presented community projects in Victoria, Montréal, and Richmond, B.C., and participated in a number of group exhibitions in North America and Europe.
In 2003, Thauberger was awarded a Vancouver Arts Development Award and was a regional finalist for the Sobey Art Award. She was also the recipient of British Columbia's most prestigious annual awards for the visual arts, VIVA award in 2011. Her work is included in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada.
Augustine, Jean 1937- : The Honourable Jean Augustine is the first black woman elected to Parliament in 1993. Ms. Augustine was Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister from 1994-1996, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and the Status of Women from 2002-2004. She was born in Grenada in 1937 and emigrated to Canada in 1959. Working for a number of years as an elementary school principal before entering politics, Ms. Augustine has been involved in many social causes, particularly anti-racism initiatives, and is the recipient of numerous awards for her services. She is involved with the Jean Augustine Scholarship Fund, a scholarship established in her honour that provides help to single mothers studying at George Brown College in Toronto. Ms. Augustine is largely responsible for having February declared Black History Month in Canada. After retiring from politics she became the first Fairness Commissioner, a position created to advocate for Canadians with foreign professional credentials.
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