Winnipeg, Canada 

Dorothy Dobbie was a member of Parliament from 1988 to 1993. She served as parliamentary secretary and co-chaired the Joint House Senate Committee on the Renewal of Canada. She is immediate past president of the Canadian Association of Former Parliamentarians and current president of the International Peace Garden.

She is a writer and owner of Pegasus Publications Inc., publisher of magazines and tabloids, among them Beyond the Hill for the Former Parliamentarians. After hosting a garden radio show for 20 years, she and some partners recently started Lifestyles 55 Digital Radio. 

Mrs. Dobbie was the first woman president of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, was chair of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and the National Arts Summit, is a past member of the Nature Conservancy Canada, former chair of Tree Canada among many community volunteer roles. 

She is a member of the Order of Canada, among other awards and honours. 

H. Roger Garland is a member of the Board of Soulpepper Theatre Company in Toronto and a Director of a number of public and private corporations. He was Vice-Chairman of Four Seasons Hotels until 2000, having joined the company in 1981 as Senior Vice-President, Finance. Prior to joining Four Seasons, he was a Vice-President, Corporate Banking with Citibank N.A. in Canada and Switzerland. He began his career with Pricewaterhouse and qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1966.

Ms. Giguère is a firm believer in the power of the arts to uplift the spirit of the community and that volunteering is a fundamental building block of a just society. She has compiled a three-decade record of volunteer support for the arts notably with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet (RWB) and the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre (RMTC), Culture Days and Winnipeg Theatre Awards.  Her experience with the RWB led to her appointment to the board of Q Dance. Ms. Giguère was appointed to the Board of the Canadian Museum of History in 2014 and was recently reappointed for a third term. 

Ms. Giguère was a member of the Canadian Arts Summit Steering Committee for ten years and chaired the Montreal Summit. She was an original member of the Culture Days National Steering and Fund Development Committees.  Subsequently, she founded Culture Days Manitoba and Nuit Blanche Winnipeg.

She has also served on the board of the United Way and is a founder of the Guardian Angel Break Cancer Benefit. Her service as chair realized the establishment of the Breast Cancer of Hope as well as a mobile mammography unit and the Manitoba Breast Cancer Advisory Council. She has also worked as an instructor and Board Chair for the Manitoba Therapeutic riding program for children with disabilities. 

In 2011, Ms. Giguère was honoured with the first-ever “Making a Difference Award” by the Winnipeg Arts Council. She was awarded the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Media for her contribution to the artistic life in Canada and is the recipient of the Governor General Ramon Hnatyshyn Award for volunteerism in the Performing Arts. In 2014, Ms. Giguère was inducted as a Member of the Order of Canada.

Carol R. Hill is a Director of the Regina-based Hill Companies. She is also the Founding Chair of the Canadian Chapter of the Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums, an organization helping to restore art treasures held there. Most recently, Carol assisted in raising funds for “The Santa Rosa Necropolis” (dating from 50BC – 200AD, the 40 large tombs and 200 graves of this site reveal a wealth of information about both the Roman middle class and their slaves). She was also instrumental in bringing the 200-piece collection, “Angels From the Vatican,” which was exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Carol is a former Board member of the Regina’s Globe Theatre, Royal Winnipeg Ballet and sat on the Advisory Board of the Banff School for Excellence.

Michael M. Koerner, C.M., has an SB in Chemical Engineering from MIT and an MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. He is President of Canada Overseas Investments Limited and serves on a number of corporate boards. Michael is a Trustee of the Art Gallery of Ontario and served as President from 1982-84. He is a Life Member of the Corporation, MIT. He is Treasurer of the Ontario Arts Council Foundation and of the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund. A patron of many performing and visual arts organizations, he was instrumental in the creation of the Canadian Encyclopaedia of Music. In 2006, Michael received the Edmund C. Bovey Award.

Hon. Roy MacLaren, P.C., is a graduate of the Universities of British Columbia, Cambridge and Toronto. He was a Canadian diplomat from 1957 to 1970, a businessman from 1970, and a federal Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister from 1979 to 1996 when he became High Commissioner for Canada in the U.K. Upon completion of his London appointment, he joined several boards in Britain and Canada and resumed his earlier membership on the board of the Canadian Opera Company. He is also a director of the Royal Ontario Museum Foundation.

Gail O’Brien holds positions with a variety of non-profit organizations in Canada and abroad. She is Co-Chair of the Council for Canadian American Relations, Chair of the Dean’s Advisory Council for the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary and the Birks Advisory Board for Calgary, Vice-Chair of the Glenbow Museum, Trustee of the board of The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), and Trustee of the Board of the Ontario Science Centre. She is also the past chair of the National Arts Centre Foundation and past board member of the YWCA of Calgary. Formerly the owner of a speciality women’s boutique and General Manager of Calgary’s Holt Renfrew, Gail was the recipient of the Women of Distinction Award for Business and Entrepreneurs in 2000. She holds a BA in English and Fine Arts from McGill University.

James B. Pitblado, C.M., is retired Chairman of RBC Dominion Securities. He is a Director of the National Ballet of Canada Endowment Foundation and the Ontario Arts Foundation and is Past Chairman of the Board of the National Ballet of Canada and of the National Ballet Endowment Foundation. In 2000, he received the Edmund C. Bovey Award for Leadership Support of the Arts. He and his wife Sandra were the recipients of the Outstanding Philanthropists of the Year Award (1999) and the Governor General’s Ramon John Hnatyshyn Award for Voluntarism in the Performing Arts (2003). He and Sandra continue to be generous patrons of the arts.

Gillian Smith is Vice President, Membership and Marketing at the Toronto Region Board of Trade (TRBoT). In this role, she is responsible for developing, leading and delivering the strategy, services and activities necessary to retain, engage and grow the Board’s membership of more than 12,000 Toronto business leaders. Prior to joining TRBoT, Gillian served as Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, a national charity that promotes inclusion and citizenship. In this role, she built a national network of more than 1,200 partners to serve the integration needs of Canada’s new citizens in all aspects of Canadian life. In addition, Gillian spent more than fifteen years in the private sector in senior corporate communications and government relations roles, notably with the Royal Bank of Canada and RBC Capital Markets, and Aeroplan (now Aimia). A graduate of Queen’s University (Honours, Arts – Sociology and French), Gillian is very active in the community. She currently serves as Chair of the Toronto Public Library Foundation, Vice Chair of Community Food Centres Canada and is a board director with Business / Arts and Culture Days.

Robert S. Weiss, F.C.A., is Treasurer of CBAC. Until his retirement in September 2000, he was the Managing Partner of Arthur Andersen for Toronto and partner-in-charge of the Ontario practice. He was recognized by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario as a Fellow in 1994. A graduate of the University of Toronto in Political Science and Economics, Robert now serves as a member of the Governing Council and the Business Board of U of T and is Past Chair of the Audit Committee. Past Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, he served as Chair of the Canadian Arts Summit Steering Committee in 2001-2002.