Paul Fast, Michael Henderson and Melissa Higgs have been appointed principals at HCMA Architecture + Design. All three were formerly associates at the firm. Fast joined HCMA in 2009 and has led projects ranging from a children’s playhouse to a complex, $80 million community recreation centre. Henderson has spent more than 15 years at HCMA; he oversaw the design and construction of the award-winning Hillcrest Centre and is currently leading the Minoru Complex and Complexe Aquatique de Laval projects. Higgs joined the firm in 2005 and has focused on designing arts and culture projects and community recreation facilities, including the award-winning Grandview Heights Aquatic Centre. Recently, she has created long-range vision plans for Granville Island and the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation.
Education
Leelah Dawson has been appointed dean at the British Columbia Institute of Technology School of Business, effective February 28. Dawson currently serves as dean of the faculty of social sciences and management at Langara College, and prior to that, she was an instructor and associate dean at Camosun College.
Ron McKay has been appointed director, immigration practitioner programs, at Ashton College. Prior to this appointment, McKay worked in the immigration consulting industry at the provincial and national levels, including working with Clark Wilson LLP and serving as an immigration officer in Tokyo, Japan. McKay served as a national chair of the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council in 2016, and was the first elected national president of the Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants.
Mandeep Bedi has also joined the Ashton College team as a digital marketing specialist. Bedi has worked with international clients from the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada and India. Previous positions include marketing manager of Omni Furniture and digital marketing manager at Classic Informatics
Finance
Arthur Griffiths has joined Renaissance Mergers and Acquisitions as executive strategic adviser. Griffiths, former owner of the Vancouver Canucks, Vancouver Grizzlies and General Motors Place, has extensive experience in business and corporate finance, and also served as chair of the Vancouver/Whistler 2010 Bid Society.
Janelle Goulard has joined Pangaea Ventures as director of health investment. Prior to this appointment, Goulard worked at a venture capital firm investing in health technologies. Goulard has eight years of experience in strategic and operations health-care consulting, and six years with GE Healthcare in both North America and Europe; she launched a startup that became a joint venture between GE and Microsoft. Pangaea has also promoted Sarah Applebaum to director of Pangaea Spark, and Matthew Cohen has been promoted to director of technology. Applebaum and Cohen both joined Pangaea as associates in 2012.
Health/Medical
Randal Chase, a member of Advanced Proteome Therapeutics Corp.’s board of directors since June 2015, has been appointed CEO and president of the company, replacing Allen (Alexander) Krantz, who will assume the newly created roles of chief scientific officer and chief operating officer. Chase’s prior appointments include acting as president and CEO of Immunovaccine from 2006 to 2011, serving as chair of Medicago from 2006 to 2013, and most recently serving as chair of Medimabs from January 2014 to July 2015.
Legal
David Curtis, Grant Foster and Stephanie G. Gutierrez, previously associates at Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP, have been promoted to partners. Curtis is a member of the litigation and dispute resolution group; his practice primarily focuses on construction litigation and he also practises in the area of energy law. Foster’s practice focuses on mergers and acquisitions, reorganizations and general corporate/commercial advice, as well as debt and equity financings. Gutierrez represents employers in a wide range of labour, employment and human rights matters, providing advice in both unionized and non-unionized work environments.
Robyn Miles has joined Terra Law Corp. as associate counsel. Miles previously practised as a senior associate with a well-established boutique firm in Vancouver. Her practice focuses on real estate development, including commercial acquisitions and dispositions, financings, leasing, general business and strata property law.
Non-profit
Diane S. Nicolson, president, Amarc Resources Ltd., has been appointed chair of the board of directors of the Association for Mineral Exploration (AME). Nicolson and incumbent directors ‘Lyn Anglin, Don Bragg and Kendra Johnston were re-elected, and Lana Eagle and Andy Randell were newly elected at AME’s 105th annual general meeting.
Cory Paterson has been appointed director of policy at the BC Trucking Association, effective February 22. Paterson has more than 15 years of policy, research and advocacy experience, having worked with two provincial governments (B.C. and Alberta), the federal government and industry, such as Devon Canada, a major oil and gas producer, and Enbridge, where he spent the past four years in the company’s Vancouver office.
Technology
Neil Gambow has resigned from Kelso Technologies Inc.’s board of directors, where he served since December 2009.
Hats Off
The City of Burnaby donated a $5,000 grant to Big Sisters of BC Lower Mainland. These funds will help the organization match at-risk girls with a supportive mentor.
BC Housing and its employees donated $15,430 to Big Brothers of Greater Vancouver to help local children through mentoring.
Scotiabank donated a sponsorship of $7,500 to the Vancouver Girls Ice Hockey Association.
Mechanical Contractors Association of British Columbia (MCABC) donated $4,912 to Crohn’s & Colitis Canada. Funds were raised through the contributions of MCABC members and friends at the MCABC 2016 Holiday Open House. The funds will go to local research for chronic inflammatory bowel diseases, which affect one in every 150 Canadians.
Westminster Savings Credit Union has kicked off a three-year provincial partnership with Special Olympics BC (SOBC). The partnership, one of three initially announced by Westminster Savings in October 2016, involves gifts of $75,000 each year to help Special Olympics BC programs enrich the lives of individuals with intellectual disabilities. As an SOBC provincial partner from 2017 to 2019, Westminster Savings will serve as the presenting sponsor of the Polar Plunge for Special Olympics BC. The credit union’s funding will also create opportunities for athletes to compete in the 2017 Special Olympics BC Summer Games in Kamloops held July 6-8, and support SOBC’s important programs helping individuals with intellectual disabilities improve their health.
Pacific Spirit Foundation donated $1 million towards the development of YWCA Pacific Spirit Terrace, a housing community for low-income single-mother-led families. Opening in summer 2018, YWCA Pacific Spirit Terrace will provide 31 units of safe and affordable family housing.
100 Men Who Give a Damn Vancouver donated $10,000 to PALS, a non-profit, independent school providing individualized, year-round educational programs for children and adolescents living with autism. The funds will be used to support the school’s speech and language intervention programs.
RBC donated $11,000 to Decoda Literacy Foundation in support of 25 Syrian families with young children attending the 10-session family literacy program, Immigrant Parents as Literacy Supporters, in partnership with Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House.
$26,000 was donated to the Richmond Hospital Birth Centre. The funds were raised through the 2016 Shoppers Drug Mart Growing Women’s Health campaign and will help to purchase a new telemetry unit through the dedicated support from store teams of all six Richmond locations and their customers. Since 2008, this group of Richmond-based community leaders of Shoppers Drug Mart has raised a total of more than $167,000 to support Richmond Hospital.
In honor of its 50th anniversary, Hakim Optical, one of Canada’s largest independent optical retailers, has announced it will be donating 100,000 pairs of frames, reading glasses and sunglasses to those in need. The Canadian retailer is working in partnership with the Canadian Lions Eyeglass Recycling Centre and has already donated over 50,000 pairs of new glasses to the organization and 30,000 pairs of eyewear to the Belize Council for the Visually Impaired.
Pacific Quorum Properties’ annual holiday food drive donated 5,390 pounds of food, enough to provide meals for more than 4,300 people in need from Metro Vancouver to the Okanagan Valley. Every year, Pacific Quorum Properties teams up with the owners and residents of the properties it manages to support local community food banks. The program was introduced to the Okanagan this year through Okanagan Strata Management, a Pacific Quorum Properties subsidiary, and has raised over 11.8 tonnes of food since 2012.
The Stollery Charitable Foundation donated $50,000 to YWCA Metro Vancouver. The funds will be used to help build safe, affordable housing as part of the Onni CentreView development in North Vancouver for single-mother-led families.
TD Friends of the Environment Foundation donated $4,647 to the Stanley Park Ecology Society to support its project, Growing Vancouver’s Largest Urban Forest. Approximately one-third of Stanley Park is overrun with non-native invasive plant species, and this donation will help the society continue restoration efforts and help maintain or increase biodiversity in the park.
Employees at Richmond Honda held fundraisers throughout 2016 to raise funds in support of Ronald McDonald House BC and Yukon. With the help of a matching donation, a total of $9,000 was donated.
Vancouver-area Whole Foods Market locations donated $22,775.97 to University of British Columbia, to be used toward its capital campaign. Funds were raised through community giving days, called 5% Days, where 5% of that day’s net sales are donated to a local non-profit or educational organization. •
