THE ‘LUCKY ’ ONE

BY CELIA HORE MILNE’78 PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMIE DAY FLECK’00

Mary Pat JONES Armstrong’63 is the consummate volunteer. Eager to help people, especially children. Not the cookie-baking kind of volunteer—although goodness knows she has done that countless times—but rather the kind that figures out what needs to be done, collaborates with others, leads the whole campaign from start to fi nish, raises millions of dollars, and creates organizations where none existed before. By doing what she does, Mary Pat improves lives, now and in the future.

So extraordinary is Mary Pat’s dedication to her community and to people in need, she was awarded the Order of Canada in December 2017. She still gets choked up when she describes what it felt like to tell her family. “It was very overwhelming,” she says. “I was not expecting that.”

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The roots of her volunteer leadership stem from her early days at Branksome, her training as a nurse educator, and being a mom to daughters Marion, Sally, Jenny and Ali.

Mary Pat, 78, and her husband Bob are disengaging from their working lives, or hoping to—hers as a volunteer leader and his as a money manager. They now split their time between homes in Toronto and Caledon, as well as Orchid Island, Florida. Mary Pat stays active playing tennis and golf, using her elliptical trainer and doing long walks in the country (she runs up the hills).

While Mary Pat says it was her parents who gave her an incredible gift to believe in herself, Branksome gave her “the confidence to jump in and follow my passion.” She started at the school in Grade 9 and graduated in the Class of 1963. “I loved it from the day I walked in the door,” she says. “I had small classes and teachers who really cared. I also had leadership opportunities and was a Clan chieftain and prefect.”

Branksome, she says, also taught her organizational skills and a strong work ethic.

After high school, Mary Pat went to the University of Toronto and obtained a BSc in nursing and a registered nurse designation. After getting married to Bob in 1967 and starting a family, she went back to school for her master’s in education. “I did all my papers and reading between five and seven in the morning and between eight and 10 in the evening because I had little kids,” she says.

Bob and Mary Pat moved to Montreal, where she taught nursing at McGill University and then Concordia University. Many years later, in 2017, her alma mater, the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto, awarded her the Distinguished Alumni Award to recognize her dedication to serving her community.

Over the course of two interviews about her life and volunteerism, the expression Mary Pat probably uses most often is “I am so lucky.” She says it about her education. She says it about her parents. She says it about her country. And she says it about her family.

It is a way of looking at a life that has also involved extraordinary challenges.

Mary Pat and Bob’s fi rst daughter, Marion, died of leukemia at age five and a half. At the time, their second daughter, Sally, was four. She remembers Sally saying, “Where’s Marion?”

Knowing that 46 years have passed since that day does not blunt its rawness for the listener. “It’s a vivid experience, and it’s important to look it in the face as much as you can,” says Mary Pat about dealing with loss. Her grieving process included writing, running, talking about Marion and turning the family’s tragedy into helping others.

A year or two after Marion’s death, Mary Pat and Bob received a phone call from Marion’s oncologist, Dr. Peter McClure. He wondered if they would like to help build Canada’s first Ronald McDonald House.

They loved the concept of a house near the hospital where families could stay while their children underwent life-saving therapy. “While Marion was alive and we’d go to the hospital for her treatments, I saw so many families that were also in crisis and distress,” says Mary Pat. “When I left the hospital, I had a 10-minute drive to get home, but many families had to drive two hours to get home—or they went to a hotel. I could see and appreciate the importance of having families together at these times.”

Mary Pat helped spearhead the fundraising effort, and Canada’s fi rst Ronald McDonald House opened in Toronto in 1981. She was the inaugural chair of the board of directors. Since then, 15 more Ronald

McDonald Houses have opened from coast to coast. “It turned my grief into positivity,” she says.

She still visits Ronald McDonald House. “It has grown so much since the fi rst one we began, and I’m grateful to the donors. I still fi nd it extremely emotional talking to parents with their little ones and seeing that they are together. It can bring me to tears.” people with intellectual disabilities who are entering adulthood. She knew from watching Jenny that it is a particularly difficult time of life when you see your siblings go off to university and then into their own apartments, while you stay home.

Mary Pat’s formidable energy was next focused on founding Camp Oochigeas, a camp for children with cancer, now known as Campfi re Circle. With a group of like-minded volunteers, she helped start the camp in 1983. Back then, it ran for only one week each year; nowadays, it runs all summer. “It is so rewarding to see those kids get off the bus and throw off their wigs and just be happy.”

Mary Pat’s family life was the impetus for another important theme of her volunteer efforts. Her third daughter, Jenny, has intellectual disabilities, and Mary Pat has worked tirelessly to improve the lives of those with such disabilities and their families. In 1999, she was involved in kick-starting a technology project called ConnectABILITY, which provides online training, peer interaction and educational opportunities. It is now used by educators throughout the province.

More recently, Mary Pat wanted to do something meaningful for

In 2003, Mary Pat and Bob had been able to buy a house for Jenny to live in, along with two housemates and a live-in caregiver. But Mary Pat knew that many families needed help to set up their loved ones in similar independent living arrangements. She set to work establishing LIGHTS, a charitable organization that fi nds appropriate housing for those with intellectual disabilities, matches them with roommates and helps families fi nd fi nancial supports.

Mary Pat was the visionary behind the charity, rallying government support, partnering with Community Living Toronto, establishing procedures and policies, and setting up a board of directors. She says there are now 85 young men and women living independently in the community, and fundraising is ongoing, thanks to LIGHTS. She hopes that, ultimately, the Ontario government will take over most of the cost.

“Part of what I do with LIGHTS is advocacy,” says Mary Pat. “Th is population cannot do it. Our daughter Jenny probably has more friends than anyone else in the family. She is adored by everyone she meets. She’s totally non-judgmental. She has no fi lters. She’s very engaging. But she’s not about to go down to Queen’s Park and stand there and say, ‘Our population needs a lot of money and a lot of help.’”

Mary Pat’s volunteerism seems to know no bounds. She volunteered at Branksome, where two of her girls attended, as well as the Conference of Independent Schools. She sat on the board of the Toronto Children’s Chorus, and was on the board of Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital. She also sat on the Human Subject Review Committee at SickKids, an ethical review board.

When Mary Pat does a fundraiser, she doesn’t just bake the cookie dough, she assembles the funds and the people needed to build the kitchen. An example of thinking bigger is how she and Bob supported the Trans Canada Trail, an adored piece of Canadiana that winds its way near their place in Caledon. When asked to get involved, the Armstrongs didn’t just send money; they agreed to match other people’s gifts, dollar for dollar, to ensure a greater impact.

“My philosophy is really to make the world a better place than we found it,” says Mary Pat. Although she has faced deep sadness, she never feels sorry for herself. “I am passionate about giving back to a world that has been good to me.” R

Christina VEIRA’05 speaks out for racialized people in the hospitality industry

BY EMILY RAMSHAW’07 PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMIE DAY FLECK’00

“

Ithink it’s really funny that my entire life is social, because I’m a naturally shy person,” says Christina VEIRA’05. She’s not kidding about the social part. It is her life. It is also her career. These days, everywhere she goes, you’ll fi nd Christina embodying the defi nition of social: hosting, mixing drinks and building a community.

She’s a part-owner of Toronto’s ultra-trendy Bar Mordecai on Dundas West, but like many millennials, she’s a true multi-hyphenate—with a hospitality spin. On any given day, you’ll fi nd her bouncing from Bar Mordecai’s karaoke rooms and Wes Anderson-inspired bar, to consulting for a bevy of liquor brands, to teaching a range of hospitality seminars, to judging mixology competitions and attending conferences all over the world, to whipping up cocktails on talk shows, to making drinks in her bathtub for a very passionate Instagram audience. Social, unquestionably. High-flying, dynamic and busy too. “Shy” is just about the last descriptor that comes to mind.

When she was a student at Branksome from Grades 9 through 12 and passionate about the debate team, Model UN and drama, a career in hospitality wasn’t what Christina envisioned, but she credits the school all the same. When she graduated, she went to the University of Toronto to earn a degree in mathematics, with English literature and philosophy minors. But it was working part time at restaurants that she found her calling. “Pretty soon in, I knew that I loved hospitality and eventually wanted to own a restaurant,” she says matter-of-factly. “Some people end up in hospitality almost by accident. For me, I knew this was what I wanted to do. And I knew I wanted to be a proprietor.”

A university student working at a restaurant where, as Christina puts it, “you always get a free meal and it’s social,” is a common enough story, but going from a math degree to setting your sights—at the ripe old age of 22, no less— on ownership, not so much. The way Christina tells it, that’s where Branksome comes in.“I was always in awe of the confidence that so many people from the school had in their capabilities,” she explains. “I always felt that the school tended to produce and attract people who were more entrepreneurial. And that’s something I identify with.”

She goes on: “I think about me in university working in support staff roles at a restaurant, thinking, ‘I can own one of these.’ Why did I think that?” Christina describes a forthrightness and intention she sees often in her fellow alums. They’re qualities she clearly has herself. “We had a whole adolescence where we were always allowed to talk; we were always allowed to have opinions—we were supposed to. Whether or not we knew how hard some things could be because we are women, we were always told that we could do well if we worked hard.”

That Branksome confidence has given Christina a kind of fearlessness in an industry that, through the global pandemic, has at times been downright scary. She became a partner at Bar Mordecai in August 2020 after the founders reached out to her (the spot opened in January of that year). It was a time when many of her other gigs had dried up.“I woke up one day and had lost all my contracts,” explains Christina. “It made me spend a lot of time with myself: Is that what I want to do? Should I do something differently? Is this a time to restart? Am I going to do something else or am I going to stay?”

Suffice it to say, she stayed—and Bar Mordecai has flourished. More than that, through the pandemic, she never forgot what brought her to the hospitality industry to begin with: community. It’s something else Christina learned the value of at Branksome, and it’s what she’s dedicated herself to building in her profession. It’s the uniting force behind her many business ventures. Pre-pandemic, Christina was known to donate all of her tips on a given night to local women-focused charities, but through the pandemic, she took that community-building proclivity online.

During the two-plus-year period when we were all glued to our screens, Christina used her platform and authority to speak out. “Compared to 2007,” when she started, says Christina,“if someone asked me if the industry is better, I would have to say yes. Is it where it should be? No. But it’s drastically better than it was 15 years ago.”

Notably, there’s the diverse representation she’d like to see in Toronto’s restaurants and bars, both among staff and customers. “Now you see more women in authority positions,” she says. “You see more of those women being women of colour. It’s still not at the proportion that reflects society or reflects the city. Toronto is over 50 per cent POC and I don’t think the authority figures in spaces or liquor brands even remotely reflect that.”

Christina herself is subject to these racial biases, though their ugly manifestation has changed as she’s moved up in the industry. “You become very aware of how you manage people’s expectations,” she explains. “At Mordecai, our guests are awesome, but many of them, when they’re talking to me, don’t think I’m an owner. Usually most of them think I’m a manager at the most. Even with journalists, my partners will be like, this is our partner, Christina, and then they’ll print something and it will say, ‘head bartender, Christina…’”

While Christina continues to do daily battle for herself and her community, the industry has celebrated her—undoubtedly in part because of her willingness to speak out. In 2022, she was named Industry Icon by The World’s 50 Best Bars, a global organization that recognizes the best of hospitality. And her many appearances in the media and at conferences and competitions are illustration of how keen her industry and city are to spotlight her.

But she’s quick to call out that her individual success doesn’t necessarily mean that the industry itself is advancing at the same pace. “I know that when I’m in a room, I’m always going to be absorbed as a Black woman,” she says. “But I have an educated Canadian accent, I have an educational and class background that helps, I’m attractive enough… these are all things that get you into a room and help you stay in a room. Even though I’m often the only Black woman in that room, it’s still important to think about those things that are making me more acceptable to the people in this room. It’s not like: I’m here, so this is a triumph. All sorts of different people have to be here.”

Christina’s confidence in her own capabilities made her restaurant proprietorship come true, but it’s her willingness to use her platform and authority to speak truth to industry structural challenges that has made her someone worthy of a title like “Industry Icon.” It’s that Branksome-made belief that one’s opinion is worth voicing—with an intention and directness that makes others want to listen. Despite her own self-description, Christina certainly won’t be called shy anytime soon. R