Interviews Relating to Women and Work in Alberta

Tarik Accord
Somalia-born Tarik Accord worked in several cleaning firms. Injured on the job at one of them, she helped form a union at Bee Clean and served as a union steward, emphasizing education of members regarding their legal rights with regards to occupational health and safety.

Edeline Agoncillo
Edeline Agoncillo is a Filipino immigrant who worked for K-Bro for two years as a temporary foreign worker, before completing a college program that she was misinformed would lead to her receiving a Canadian work permit.

Stella Ajuzieogu
Stella Ajuzieogu, a Nigerian-trained registered nurse/midwife, earned her Nursing degree in Australia, and has served as an RN at the University of Alberta Hospital, and an AHS Community Care Case Manager.

Ruth Alexander
Ruth Alexander was a long-time ICU and community nurse in Edmonton and UNA activist who faced workplace discrimination as a Black nurse.

Angela Allen
Red Seal journeyperson concrete/cement finisher, member of the LIUNA Construction and General Workers’ Union, Local 92. First woman concrete/cement finisher in the City of Calgary sidewalk division. Chair of Build Together Alberta.

Aisha Amin
Journeyperson welder; she contributed her welding skills to the festival community for many years by producing large frames for the annual Cariwest street parade.

Kathleen Andrews
Kathleen Andrews was the first woman bus driver with Edmonton Transit Service and later its first woman dispatcher and then woman in management.

Lisa Andrews
Lisa Andrews, the daughter of the first woman bus driver with Edmonton Transit Service (ETS), also works for ETS as a transit training instructor.

Donna Antsey
Donna Antsey had a long career at the University of Alberta in cardiovascular surgery before becoming a Patient Care Coordinator.

Peggy Askin
Peggy Askin, former president of Local 203 Telecommunications Workers Union in Calgary, describes labour’s long fight against the deterioration of working conditions at Telus and the decimation of its labour force through privatization.

Joyce Avramenko
Joyce Avramenko describes the roles of coal miners’ wives in their communities and the extent of domestic abuse that many of these women experienced.

Lesley Baker
Lesley Baker is a Calgary recreational therapist whose activities in HSAA spanned serving on the Board, chairing the Political Action Committee, and serving as a labour strategist for the United Way.

Anne Baranyk-Broad
Anne Baranyk-Broad was president of Local 120, United Garment Workers, at GWG from 1956 to 1970.

Vicky Beauchamp
Vicky Beauchamp was a meat packager at Gainers, a union activist, and a strike leader during the Gainers Strike of 1986.

Jane Bennett
Jane Bennett is a long-time nurse who worked in coronary care, hematology, and eventually postpartum community services.

Sheila Berrisford
Sheila Berrisford is a senior nurse in Edmonton who began work in Health Link after a patient assault reduced her ability to do bedside work.

Judith Blakely
Judy Blakely has been a long-time nurse in British Columbia and Alberta as well as a municipal politician in Hinton.

Clare Botsford
Clare Botsford was a 9-year-old girl whose family was living on welfare when she happened to view police clubbing Hunger Marchers in Edmonton in December, 1932.

Maureen Brass
Maureen Brass was part of the first Public Health unit team in Canmore in 1974 where she initiated home care service in the town

Linda Bridge & Barb Charles

Wendy Brigham
Wendy Brigham had a long nursing career at Rocky View General Hospital beginning in 1980, and of union activism including both local mentoring and solidarity actions with nurses at other facilities.

Lynn Bue
Lynn Bue, lifelong feminist activist, was the first woman to be the Canadian Union of Postal Workers’ first vice-president, first chief national negotiator, and first openly LGBTQ2S+ member of the national executive.

Ellen Bullock
When Ellen Bullock became a pork cutter at Burn’s from 1969 to 1980, doing “men’s work,” she endured endless male chauvinist teasing to earn wages to raise her three children on her own.

Christine Burdett
Christine Burdett chaired Friends of Medicare from 1999 to 2004, and led organization of a militant campaign against Ralph Klein’s Bill 11 in 2000 which proposed an expanded role for private surgical clinics.

Barb Byers
Over a long career in the labour movement, social worker Barb Byers served as president of the Saskatchewan Government Employees Union, president of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour, and vice-president and later secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress.

Yessy Byl
Lawyer Yessy Byl, who served as TFW advocate for the Alberta Federation of Labour, describes how the Temporary Foreign Worker Program exploits working people.

Kathie Bzdel
Kathie Bzdel is a proud union leader who recovered from a life-threatening stroke and faced disability bias before joining HSAA as a palliative homecare social worker and union activist.

Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse
Elected NDP MLA for Edmonton Rutherford in 2023, Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse has had a varied career that includes trapping, community rehabilitation for Indigenous people, hosting a radio show, founding a production company, organizing festivals, and serving as Executive Director of the Yellowhead Indigenous Education Foundation.

Barbara Campbell
Barbara Campbell is a veteran oncology nurse and union activist in two provinces who has experienced the reduction in patient services that hospital cutbacks involve as well as the resentments that bumping resulting from cutbacks produce.

Marie Campbell
Marie Campbell had a long career in nursing in Saskatchewan and Edmonton , during which she participated in 5 strikes and became a Ward Rep who mentored new nurses coming into her workplace.

Catherine Canning

Kathleen Cariaga-Estapa
Kathleen Cariaga has been active in AUPE’s local at Chartwell in Edmonton where she first began work as a housekeeper who was a temporary foreign worker.

Evangeline Cayanan
Evangeline Cayanan is an undocumented worker whose harrowing tales are an indictment of the Temporary Foreign Worker program and treatment of undocumented workers in Canada.

Laurie Coates

Kim Conway

Joy Correia
Joy Correia has been involved in struggles of the Non-Academic Staff Association at the University of Alberta as first a member and then a staffer since 1982.

Jennifer Cory
Jennifer Cory, an RN and new graduate, exemplified leadership early in her career, recognizing that all nurses have the responsibility to advocate for patient safety, regardless of their years of work experience.

Karen Craik
Karen Craik is the Secretary-Treasurer of the United Nurses of Alberta, a position held since 1996. She has a long history with UNA, from their founding in 1977 to the present day, protecting nurses’ rights and our healthcare system.

Collette Cullen
Collette Cullen is an Indigenous woman who has served in the Canadian military, and has also worked as an emergency medical technician, a cementer, a police officer, a prison guard, and a vehicle salesperson, among other jobs.

Delanee Daviau
Red Seal journeyperson welder; member of Ironworkers Local 720; one of the original members of Build Together Alberta.

Carol Anne Dean
Carol Anne Dean was President of the Alberta Union of Public Employees (AUPE) when she faced off with the Klein-era conservatives privatizing and cutting many public employees’ jobs.

Bev Dick
Bev Dick, before her retirement in 2013, had been a UNA activist since its founding and served as first vice-president from 1995 to 2013.

Ann Dort-MacLean
Ann Dort-MacLean has fought for improvements for the unemployed, women, Indigenous people, temporary foreign workers, and the environment since she and her family moved to Fort McMurray in 1978.

Lisa Dubbeldam
Lisa Dubbeldam’s work in community nursing caused her to become an advocate for full assessments and adequate staffing to support the needs of her patients.

Maria Dunn
Juno-award winning folk singer and labour activist Maria Dunn is a gifted songwriter and performer, with “sharp and poignant lyrics,” who draws audiences into the heart of the stories she tells about labour history.

Margaret Ethier
Margaret Ethier was president of the United Nurses of Alberta from 1980 to 1988 and led the Alberta nursing strikes of 1982 and 1988.

Shawna Estis
Shawna Estis, a member of the Little Grand Rapids First Nation in northern Manitoba, describes work in the service industry in Edmonton, including a case in which she and a fellow worker were denied pay they were owed when the employer declared bankruptcy.

Mary Ewasiw
Mary Ewasiw worked at the Swifts/Gainers plant for over two decades, and became active in the UFCW.

Angela Fiddler
Angela Fiddler, a member of the Waterhen Cree Nation, faced racism in oilsands’ work camps and was able, as a shop steward for UFCW Local 401, to bargain for Indigenous rights to worship in the camps.

Mary Jane Fisher
When she became an LPN, former Jehovah’s Witness Mary Jane Fisher replaced her former religious activities with a struggle, as an AUPE activist, for workers’ rights to a safe workplace.

Jenn Fox
Jenn Fox is an Indigenous woman who served as a social worker with mainly Indigenous clients from 2005 to 2014 before retraining in agricultural science and working both as a rancher and relationship manager of insurance.

Nancy Furlong
Nancy Furlong spent her career building Alberta’s labour movement, including stints with the Alberta Union of Public Employees during the Klein-era cuts, the Alberta, Federation of Labour, and the Alberta New Democrats.

Tanya George
Tanya George has made community health nursing, with emphasis on the relationship between family health and the health of entire communities, the focus of her nursing career.

Evelyn Gilbert

Vicki Gillingham
Vicki Gillingham is an Indigenous woman and union activist who works as a process operator at Suncor.

Willa Gorman
Willa Gorman’s 40-year career as a lab technician in the women-dominated fiber department of the former Celanese plant gave her firsthand knowledge of the department’s unsafe working conditions and promoted her union activism.

Angela Grandbois
Dene Albertan and journeyperson with over 10 years of experience as a pipefitter-steamfitter; member of UA Local 488; recently completed her certification in Power Engineering.

Sheila Greckol

Holly Heffernan
Holly Heffernan is a long-time UNA activist who was in practice throughout all of the nursing strikes in Alberta.

Kristen Hennes
Kristin Hennes, a first-year acute care RN, discusses her perception of inadequate staffing as a major challenge for the profession, and its ripple effects on expectations of nurses and care delivery, as well as working conditions for which she has come to see the importance of the union.

Tilly Herman
Tilly Herman, a miner’s daughter in East Coulee, and a miner’s wife in Drumheller, recalls the lives of miners’ children and wives, both in terms of hardships and community entertainments.

Sister Theresa Horvath
Sister Theresa Horvath took the lead in organizing a UNA local at Extended Care Holyrood in Edmonton and then Extended Care Leduc as well as playing a role in organizing Extended Care Mayerthorpe.

Lydia and Tony Husyk

Kate Jacobson
Kate Jacobson is an internal organizer for the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE) who describes her earlier oppressive working conditions in non-union jobs and her years as a social and environmental militant.

Kim Jaedicke

Deb Jamerson
From Winnipeg with roots in the Black settler communities of Amber Valley and Maidstone. Union activist helping to lead the struggle against discrimination in wages towards Black health care aides; opposed privatization of homecare in Manitoba.

Cathy Jones
Cathy Jones was a long-time registered nurse in both Toronto and Banff when she became involved in heritage work in Canmore that included museum displays of the lives of miners, miners’ wives, and miners’ families.

Karen Kennedy

Jenna Knight
Jenna Knight, RN, is a nurse at the University of Alberta Hospital who has served on the UNA executive since 2011.

Helen Krizan
Helen Krizan, who was a nurse at Canmore Hospital from 1968 to 1993, supported Canmore nurses’efforts to join the United Nurses of Alberta in 1979 because the nurses were dealing with poor wages, threats to their pensions, and arbitrary management.

Karen Kuprys
Karen Kuprys is a gerontology nurse who was a leading United Nurses of Alberta activist from 1993 to 2021 when she became secretary-treasurer of the Alberta Federation of Labour. 

Mary-Beth Laviolette
Mary-Beth Laviolette is a curator, author, and former CBC journalist who research and writing have included projects involving a number of Alberta coal mining communities.

Joanne Lavkulich
Joanne Lavkulich, a member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, has served as a librarian at the Catholic Central High School in Lethbridge for 35 years. 

Bev Lawrence

Barb LeBlanc
Barb LeBlanc, a Registered ICU Nurse and former Staff Nurses Association of Alberta (SNAA) president, used the Professional Responsibility process to challenge changes affecting the effectiveness of nurses in fulfilling their roles, and helped bring SNAA into UNA in 1997 to better fight for nurses and patients.

Pam Little
Pam Little focused on developing best practices for rural nursing during 20 years of nursing in Banff.

Linda Long
Dr. Linda Rose Long was a nurse and nurse educator who worked in hospitals in four provinces and taught in a university nursing program in a fifth province.

Lyla Luciano & Olivia Wilson
Olivia Wilson and Lyla Luciano are friends and both work part-time while attending university classes. They struggle to balance precarious employment, workplace safety issues, and rising tuition costs with immersion in community and family.

Yvette Lynch
Born in Barbados, arrived in Calgary via Montreal. Worked as a laundry worker at the Calgary General Hospital and participated in the 1995 Laundry Workers Strike.

Cyriline Lynch-Parker
Worked  as a laundry worker at the Calgary General Hospital; union activist who participated in  the 1995 Laundry Workers Strike.

Siobhan Mangal
Apprentice in the Operative Plasterers’ and Cement Masons’ International Association, Local 222 and apprentice with the Heat & Frost Insulators & Allied Workers, Local 110.

Alanna Marklund
Journeyperson welder, member of UA Local 488; UA Canada, national manager for youth, diversity, and Indigenous relations.

Joyce McArthur

Lori McDaniel
As a heavy equipment operator at Suncor, Lori McDaniel experienced the sexist discrimination faced by women in non-traditional jobs, as well as an uphill struggle to promote occupational health and safety and progressive politics.

Dorothy McKenna

Marion McKenzie
Marion McKenzie is an active UNA Ward Rep and RN in nephrology at the University of Alberta who describes both her activism and racial discrimination on the job.

Lee McNiven
Lee McNiven is a long-time union activist who was UNA vice-president of Local 121, Colonel Belcher Hospital, in Calgary, at the time of her interview.

Adeline Miron

Clara Montgomery
Clara Montgomery, who grew up on a farm in the Drumheller area, describes the coal-related work of members of farm families.

Arlene Moreside
Arlene Moreside explains why the provincial UNA strike in 1988 proved a pivotal event in achieving gains in the area of occupational health and safety.

Doreen Morton

Serena Nelson
Serena Nelson is a proud Indigenous woman who serves as a workplace steward at the Safeway store in Lloydminster and who deals with racism both in the community and among fellow workers.

Noreen Olmstead
Noreen Olmstead practiced nursing from 1955 to 1962 in Saskatchewan and describes what nursing was like in the pre-medicare, pre-union period.

Cynthia Palmaria
Radiation therapist Cynthia Palmaria is a founding member of Migrante which fights for the rights of temporary foreign workers and undocumented workers in Canada.

Susan Parcels

Bena Pattni

Cynthia Perkins
Cynthia Perkins, a nursing veteran of over 45 years, describes the many health and safety issues for nurses at Rocky View General Hospital in 2007.

Tanis Pichette

Jacqueline Preyde

Mary Price

Bob Price & Diane Peterson

Daisy Plenderleith
Daisy Plenderleith, a nurse of Dominican origin, experienced racism both at Bonnyville Hospital and in several units of the Royal Alexandra through a long nursing career in Alberta.

Lindsay Poll
Lindsay Poll is a Métis WestJet flight attendant, and a member of the National Indigenous Council of the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

Diane Poynter
Diane Poynter lived the downgrading of Lethbridge and area hospital facilities and staffing during her 25-year nursing career, and had to transfer hospitals when one of the two hospitals in Lethbridge was closed.

Hazel Proctor
Of African-American heritage and strong community roots in AAACP and other organizations.  Highlights her father’s Sleeping Car Porter’s job as the best available for black men with women confined to cleaning and household employment in the 1950s and 1960s.

Doris Proulx
Doris Proulx is an Indigenous nurse with experience across emergency and ICU/CCU who mentors new Indigenous nurses and challenges culturally inappropriate and outright racist treatment of Indigenous patients.

Joyce Pui-Porretta
Joyce Pui-Porretta is a Southeast Asian-origin psychiatric nurse with over three decades of experience who has served as an advocate for nurses of colour within UNA and the AFL.

Helen Pulido
Helen Pulido’s nursing career has included work in a dialysis unit, in ICU, in long-term care, and in an acute geriatric facility where she became a unit manager.

Katie-Jo Rabbit
Within a varied history of education and work, Katie-Jo Rabbit found an important niche as an assistant manager of Saamis Aboriginal Employment and Training in Lethbridge.

Katie Rabbit-Young Pine
Katie Rabbit-Young Pine (Tsikinaakii in Blackfoot) is a Blackfoot woman who has worked 7 different jobs and participated in many volunteer roles in efforts to help her people deal with many challenges.

Jennifer Rading
Jennifer Rading is a former postal clerk who, along with the Edmonton local of CUPW, has fought for systemic changes at Canada Post to end persistent sexism in its operations.

Alexis Ranger
Alexis Ranger was a UNA activist, including during the period during 2009 and 2010 when Dr. Stephen Duckett, the first president of Alberta Health Services, was making huge cuts to healthcare staffing on behalf of the Progressive Conservative government of Ed Stelmach.

Chellae Rehbein

Sandie Rentz
Sandie Rentz had a 35-year nursing career, mostly in Red Deer at the David Thompson Regional Hospital, and describes the ways in which nurses were made to feel under-appreciated in the years before the 1988 nurses’ strike. 

Pat Richardson
Pat Richardson is a long-time UNA activist who, at the time of her interview, was working at Calgary Health Link doing telephone triage.

Trudy Richardson
Trudy Richardson was a feminist and global social justice activist who became a UNA labour relations officer in 1984 and then education director in 1990, while playing important roles in Friends of Medicare.

Linda Roberts
Linda Roberts was president of the Red Deer Regional Hospital Staff Nurses’ Association when she became a founding member of UNA in 1977.

Marle Roberts

Linda Robinson
Linda Robinson is an Indigenous polio survivor, determined to fight for improvements for Indigenous people.

Louise Rogers
Louise Rogers, RN, played a leading role in the merger of the Staff Nurses’ Association and UNA that made UNA the representative of all nurses in Alberta.

Lisa Rose

Jean Ross

Susana Runge
As an immigrant from Mexico with a career in worker education, Susana Runge has worked in health worker education and training in Grey Nuns Hospital in Edmonton and as a cultural broker with the Multicultural Health Brokers Co-op.

Cecile Sangster-Locker
Cecile Sangster-Locker is an RN and midwife who played important roles in all the nursing strikes in Alberta to date.

Jessie Saruk
Jessie Saruk, granddaughter and daughter of Ukrainian-Canadian homesteaders, became a teacher and activist in the Alberta Teachers’ Association.

Robyn Schaapman
Robyn Schaapman is a journeyperson electrician dedicated to involving more women in skilled trades.

Beryl L. Scott
Beryl Scott, RN, has been a lifelong advocate for equal treatment for marginalized groups within the healthcare system and society in general.

Michelle Senkow
Michelle Senkow is a long-time Maternal Child Care nurse throughout Alberta who became active in UNA and serves as a mentor to other nurses.

Jean Shafto
Jean Shafto nursed at Banff Mineral Springs Hospital off and on from 1945 to 1965, later training and serving as a psychiatric nurse.

Heather Shillinglaw
Indigenous artist Heather Shillinglaw employs animal hides and other articles to convey a ‘Metis Ecological Arts Message’ about the continuing colonial destruction of Indigenous lands.

Risi Shokoya
At the time of this interview, Risi Shokoya was a recent graduate from Athabasca University’s Bachelor of Nursing program at Mount Royal College who was working in general medicine and palliative care nominally part-time but almost full-time hours at Rocky View General Hospital in Calgary.

Suzanne Sirias

Linda Sloan
Linda Sloan served as president of the Staff Nurses Association of Alberta (SNAA) from 1992 to 1997 before becoming a Liberal MLA and later an Edmonton city councillor.

Heather Smith
Heather Smith, RN, who took part in all 4 province-wide United Nurses of Alberta strikes between 1977 and 1998, has served as president of UNA since 1988.

Kathleen and Charles Smith

Anna Sokolawski
Anna Sokolawski was, at the time of her interview, a new graduate nurse, who was discovering the impact of nursing shortages on both her own, and patient, safety.

Karen Sputek

Mary Strong
Mary Strong is the pseudonym for an Indigenous woman, a Sixties scoop survivor, who has become a leader in her AUPE local of homecare workers.

Muriel Stanley Venne
Muriel Stanley-Venne is a lifelong fighter for human rights and justice for Indigenous people.

Beryl Stelmach
Jamaican-born English trained nurse who specialized in different areas of her field.  In Canada, employment was mainly federal – in hospitals and penitentiaries.

Jane Sustrik
Jane Sustrik was local president of the Staff Nurses Association of Alberta at the University of Alberta Hospital when the SNAA and UNA negotiated their merger. 

Aman Takhar
Aman Takhar, RN, credits the United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) union leadership and solidarity for ensuring that nurses’ voices are heard at level where policy change can be made.

Jan Tarasoff

Clancy Teslenko
Clancy Teslenko was a CUPE activist from 1980 to 1998 when she was a unit clerk at Calgary General Hospital and an active opponent of cutbacks and privatization.

Constance Thomas
Constance Thomas is a veteran nurse, midwife, and UNA activist who has experienced many instances of racism in both her work and community lives, including denials of promotions at work.

Grace Thostenson

Karen Three Persons
Karen Three Persons is a veteran Indigenous nurse and UNA local president, who has managed training programmes for Elders’ care and home care.

Doug and Evelyn Tomlinson

Muriel Turner-Wilkinson

Siobhan Vipond
Lifelong union activist Siobhan Vipond became vice-president of the Canadian Labour Congress after years of service as steward, negotiator, and vice-president of IATSE Local 210, and secretary treasurer of the Alberta Federation of Labour.

Doreen Wabasca
First woman hired by the City of Edmonton in a road construction job; foreperson for the City; truck driver.

Maureen Werlin

Norma Wesche

Amanda Whillans
Amanda Whillans is a healthcare aide in a Cold Lake assisted living home where a bitter strike occurred in 2017.

Agnes and Lorne Wiley

Beth Wiwchar
Beth Wiwchar, a secretary for the City of Calgary and then the Bricklayers Union, became a lifelong activist for recognition and full equality for women workers.

Pauline Worsfold
Pauline Worsfold was president of the Staff Nurses Association of Alberta when that union and the United Nurses of Alberta merged, and later became the national secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions and chair of the Canadian Health Coalition. 

Myrna Wright