Four outstanding Nanaimo citizens receive Coronation Medal

 Medals are awarded to people who have made a significant contribution to their community or made an outstanding achievement abroad that brings credit to Canada. Photo: Joe Pugh / CHLY 101.7fm

Four Nanaimo citizens have received the King Charles III Coronation Medal for their outstanding work supporting the Nanaimo community.

The medal commemorates the Coronation of His Majesty King Charles III as King of Canada, and 30,000 medals will be awarded to people who have made a significant contribution to their community or made an outstanding achievement abroad that brings credit to Canada.

Laurie Grubb, Amanda Hall, Peter Sinclair, and Constable Joshua Waltman were the four recipients of the Coronation medal in Nanaimo. 

CHLY attended the award ceremony on September 5, where MLA for Nanaimo Sheila Malcolmson gave out the award.  

Laurie Grub is the president of the Royal Canadian Legion, Mount Benson Branch 256. She shares a passion for supporting her community and veterans. 

She told CHLY the award came as a surprise when she got the phone call from the MLA.

“I was totally honoured and feeling totally unworthy, and cried my eyes out on the phone and everybody I told that day afterwards, I cried all over again,” Grub said.

She said the Legion is heavily involved with the Nanaimo community and is dedicated to supporting the veterans and their families. 

“We try to remember every anniversary of the different wars around town and have ceremonies,” Grub said. “We're the biggest branch in Nanaimo and it's totally run by volunteers.”

Amanda Hall is a member of the BC People First Society where she volunteers as a membership and self-advocate liaison. She shares her lived experience with Williams Syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects many parts of the body. She writes blog posts about living with the syndrome, living with diverse abilities, and teaches workshops with Community Living B.C.

Hall told CHLY she could not have gotten as far as she did if it was not for her mom who had recently passed away.

“The community needs to know, I am a self-advocate of Nanaimo,” Hall said. “I've been doing this for a long time, and I couldn't have done it without my mom.”

One thing she wants to bring awareness to, is for people to treat those with diverse abilities with more respect.

“Treating people with diverse abilities with more respect and everything,” Hall said.

Peter Sinclair is the Executive Director of Loaves and Fishes Food Bank which serves Nanaimo and northern communities on Vancouver Island. Through his work, more people in those communities can access nutritious food and save food from going to landfills.

Sinclair spoke with CHLY after the award ceremony. He said this award is a huge honour.

“But at the same time, I recognize that there are a lot of other people who make Loaves and Fishes a success, and I'm just one small part of that,” Sinclair said. “So my reluctance in accepting the award is in part because it really needs to go to a whole group of people, and not me.”

He said the big project they are working on is their new warehouse, which he said should receive a building permit from the City of Nanaimo any day now.

“We're out to places like Tahsis, Gold River and Zeballos,” Sinclair said. “We're providing food to over 100 other nonprofits, community groups and Indigenous communities across Vancouver Island, and that is because we see that there is an abundance of food out there. You just need the infrastructure and systems in place to actually get that food to the people in need.”

He said being in his position with Loaves and Fishes means making tough decisions but that is how a lot of work gets done.

“I firmly believe that if you're just repeating the status quo over and over again, things aren't going to get better, and so you need to be bold to try new things, and you either win when you make those decisions or you learn something,” Sinclair said. “So hopefully you have a good combination of winning and learning, and you can grow from that and do even bigger things with your organization.”

Constable Joshua Waltman is Nanaimo’s first-ever RCMP Mental Health Liasion Officer. In his position, in partnership with Island Health, he created a full-time crisis car program known as Car 54. To better connect people in crisis to proper support, this program ensures there is a mental health nurse present on a crisis-related call. 

He told CHLY he was incredibly humbled to be presented with the medal.

“It is definitely not lost on me that it was not just me who brought this program together, there are lots of other people, including Nanaimo senior management and my supervisors, who were super flexible that allowed this full-time crisis car and partnership with Island Health to come together so quick,” Waltman said

He said it is gratifying to work with community members and outside agencies to see positive health outcomes.

“Our number one goal is to support people in the community, leave them in the community, in the comfort of their homes, with their loved ones,” Waltman said “Then when that fails, we work with the health authority, or Island Health to come up with a plan to provide them with a little bit of support, and then more support in the hospital to stabilize and then start over again.”

Another round of King Charles III Coronation Medals will be awarded by Nanaimo-Ladysmith Member of Parliament Lisa Marie Barron, to 20 individuals who have made significant contributions to the community later this fall. 

You can listen to the full interview with the recipients on Midcoast Morning with Joe Pugh.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.