The Globe and Mail

Ratna Omidvar, advocate

Her first immigration application was rejected. Ratna Omidvar and her husband were exiled by the Iranian revolution and flatly turned down by Canada, though she doesn’t know why.

Then, as she puts it, someone spoke to someone who knew someone, probably Canada’s ambassador in Germany, and the decision was quickly reversed. “It’s still true that what you know doesn’t matter as much as who you know,” she said.

Ms. Omidvar, president of the Maytree Foundation in Toronto, is one of Canada’s leading immigrant advocates, credited with helping corporate Canada understand and adapt to the country’s changing demographics. She said she romanticized Canada initially, but gave up her former career as a teacher and saw her husband, an engineer, struggle to find work. It was several years before she found her feet, starting as a volunteer at her child’s daycare and working her way up in the organization. Today, she has the ear of Bay Street. “I’ve always done the same work,” she said. “What I do is try to help people imagine solutions. I help people wake up to the new reality that is Canada. Immigrants have to change when they come here, but Canada has to change, too.”

Nigel Rusted, doctor

As a young doctor in Depression-era Newfoundland, Nigel Rusted took to the sea.

In a small, ill-equipped boat he braved perilous waters to reach patients on the isolated South Coast.

“Twenty-nine people drowned on that coast while I was there,” he said. Somehow, he and his crew survived. He discovered a schoolteacher with TB who risked passing the illness through the community. Dr. Rusted shut the school and sent the teacher away for treatment. Most of his career was spent on land, in the operating rooms of St. John’s, where he pioneered a number of surgeries and was the first to perform more than half a dozen procedures.

Today, at the age of 104, he’s retired but still acts as a mentor to medical students and surgeons who know his work as legend. He credits his success to “good technique and good judgment,” but also a lifetime of listening to patients and relying on clinical skills rather than medical technology. “I did about 560 cleft lips and palates, and that made a real difference in a lot of people’s lives,” he said. Receiving the Order of Canada is a nice feather in his cap. “It’s about the last honour I can get so I appreciate that very much.”

Aaju Peter, lawyer

She was a rare immigrant to Canada's North, an Inuit from Greenland who married a Canadian hunter. At 21, she moved to Iqaluit, unable to speak either the Inuit language or English.

After three years at her mother-in-law's side, Aaju Peter learned both languages well enough to become an interpreter. She also learned how to make seal-skin boots, the famous kamiik, following the centuries-old traditions of her new family.

Now a lawyer as well as a clothing maker, she is an outspoken advocate for the rights of seal hunters, a particularly pressing concern since the ban on the sale of seal products in Europe. She will travel to Denmark and Sweden in the coming year to lobby those governments to abandon a policy she says is having a devastating impact in the North.

“It's not just about the economic consequences, it's also about the effect it has on our language and culture when our hunters can't proudly produce for their families,” she said. “That has an effect on the younger generation but also the older generation.” Her next target is to ensure that Inuit are key partners in talks about the future of the Northwest Passage.

Anita Stewart, chef

She can’t take credit for inventing Canadian cuisine, but when she started writing about it nearly 30 years ago, it was a radical idea.

“Canadian cuisine was an oxymoron. People looked at me like I was crazy,” Anita Stewart said. “Nobody really thought about it. We were too busy building a nation.”

She grew up in rural Ontario always interested in cooking and baking, but it was co-writing a cookbook for her son’s elementary school that got her going in food writing. Her quest for the essence of Canadian food has taken her across the country in search of unusual ingredients and local cuisine.

“Going over the side of a Class II icebreaker into the Pacific Ocean to visit lighthouses on the West Coast, that was the most Canadian I’ve ever felt,” Ms. Stewart said. Those lighthouses, which received food delivery only every four weeks, were a hotbed of fabulous cooking, all of it from scratch.

The author or co-author of more than a dozen books, she describes herself as a “culinary activist,” and sees food as a way to bridge the urban-rural divide in this country. Her experience has taught her there is no such thing as a single Canadian cuisine, but instead a mix of regional and ethnic cuisines that make Canada a true smorgasbord.