Frazee, Catherine

CONVOCATION, OCTOBER, 2002
CATHERINE FRAZEE
to be Doctor of Letters

Catherine Frazee has never run, or walked, or stood, yet she is one of the ablest persons you could ever hope to meet. She measured out her childhood in doctors' visits, ambulance rides, and birthday candles that she could never quite blow out. When she was 18, her doctor proposed surgery so that she could breathe and sit up more easily. The chances for survival were 50-50. But if the operation were successful, she could expect to live to be forty. As she herself put it, she gambled and won, far more than anyone could have imagined. She is now well past 40, and not shy to admit it, and in those intervening years, she has built a career as a lecturer, writer, human rights commissioner, and advocate for the disabled. She has given more speeches and conference presentations, published more articles, and received more awards and professional distinctions than most able-bodied people twice her age. Her ability emerges from her brilliance and from her rare sensitivity to her own life experience and condition. She is one of Canada's most remarkable women.

Her C V tells only part of her story. She has the academic credentials of an outstanding student: a BA from Carleton University, a year in law school at Dalhousie, a certificate in alternative dispute resolution from the University of Windsor. Her work history includes seven years of service on the Ontario Human Rights Commission, including three years as chief commissioner. She has given courses in human rights law, disability policy, and disability studies; served as visiting professor at Dalhousie University School of Law and the University of Manitoba; conducted research at the West Park Hospital in Toronto and elsewhere; and consulted on human rights and disability issues with numerous government departments, private foundations, and charitable organizations. She has appeared as expert witness in several prominent Ontario cases dealing with equality, human rights, and disabilities and published voluminously on such matters as the meaning of disability, violence against women with disabilities, safeguarding children at risk of abuse, and defining and enhancing the rights of people with disabilities. Those rights, she has insisted, include respecting the autonomy of the disabled person, and especially the right to life itself. At present, she teaches in Ryerson's School of Disability Studies, co-directs the Ryerson/RBC Foundation Institute for Disability Studies Research, serves on the faculty of the National Judicial Institute, and mediates or consults with numerous agencies. Her activity leaves one breathless; she is a virtual dynamo.

We go beyond her CV, however, to discover the beauty and richness of her life. She is a person of indomitable will, courage, determination, and thirst for all that life offers, whatever one's condition. Consider, for example, her many leisure-time activities. When she graduated from university, she and three friends decided to tour Canada by van, exploring the vast recesses of the country including the Northwest Territories, pushing their van and her wheelchair to their respective limits. She has gone on safari in Kenya, Africa, writing movingly of the experience of seeing a Masai warrior walking confidently over his domain. She has stretched her conference visits into adventures into the great unknown, travelling in the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains in India, or touring Japan observing Japanese culture and facilities and programs for the disabled. She has relied on modern technical science to give her mobility, but it is a far more powerful internal driving force that has propelled her in life.

It is difficult for most of us to grasp what exactly that driving force is. We take for granted what she has never been able to take for granted. But as she herself has acknowledged, her physical limitations have forced her to go deep within herself to find meaning and purpose. She has shared her unique perspective in the almost poetic eloquence of her writing. "Suffering opens us to the deepest form of human connection," she once wrote. And elsewhere: "The simple arithmetic of it is that my disability has brought me smartly to all of the things I value - my career, my friendships, my tenacity, my intimate partner, my world view." These are the words of a person profoundly in touch with herself, and confident of her rightful place in the cosmos. It is this sensibility - this sense of ability - that inspires her students, her colleagues, and all who meet her. She brings to us tonight something we at UNB have never before quite known. It is the perspective of one who has looked on life from a unique angle, and who has brilliantly articulated it. Passionate advocate for the disabled, champion of equality and human rights, and acute observer of human fragility, Catherine Frazee builds bridges of understanding that give new meaning to the human experience. We welcome her most warmly to the company of our graduates.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 4