Steinert & Ferreiro Award
Congratulations Rachel Epstein - Recipient of the 2008 Steinert & Ferreiro Award
Launched through a bequest from the Estates of Jonathan R. Steinert and Fernando Gumercindo Ferreiro in 2005, the award is Canada’s biggest recognition of leadership in the LGBTQ community. Community contribution and leadership are at the heart of the LGBTQ community with leaders often working quietly to achieve growth, understanding and change.
The Steinert & Ferreiro Award celebrates these unsung heros of our community. The Foundation acknowledges the generous support of RBC for the 2008 award reception. See photos from the event in our Event Gallery.
About Rachel
Rachel Epstein has been a queer parenting activist, educator and researcher for close to 20 years and has made innumerable and pivotal contributions towards the support, recognition and inclusion of queer parents and their children in Canada. She has provided resources, advocacy and education to queer parents and prospective parents in the Greater Toronto area (GTA) and beyond, as well as working tirelessly to change attitudes and practices in the wider community. Rachel is at the forefront of queer parenting research in Canada and is known as a skilled and compassionate educator.
In 1997, with midwife Kathie Duncan, Rachel founded the Dykes Planning Tykes program, a course for lesbian/bi/queer women who are considering parenthood. In 2001 she was hired to develop the LGBTQ Parenting Network, originally housed at Family Service Toronto and now at the Sherbourne Health Centre. She and her daughter and co-parent were parties in the 2005 Charter Challenge that resulted in changes to birth registration procedures in Ontario, and recently she has advocated on behalf of LGBTQ communities with the Assisted Human Reproduction Agency in Ottawa. Rachel also works as a professional mediator with LGBTQ parents and prospective parents. She is currently editing a book, Who’s Your Daddy? and other writings on queer parenting, to be published by Sumach Press in April, 2009.
“I am honoured and touched to be receiving this award. In my lifetime I’ve witnessed the shift from a social and political climate that forced queer people to hide huge parts of themselves in order to keep their children, to one where we can begin to claim our sexual and gender identities and our right to parent.I feel hugely blessed to have been part of making this history, to have had the opportunity to work alongside so many fabulous queer parents, prospective parents, young people, community partners, and colleagues at the Sherbourne Health Centre and the 519 Community Centre and, before that, at Family Service Toronto, and to have been up close to and inspired by so many people’s parenting journeys.”
The Award
An individual will be presented with a commemorative award and cash prize. The winner must agree to accept the award and willing to be publicly acknowledged for their contribution.
Jonathan R. Steinert and Fernando Gumercindo Ferreiro
Fernando Gumercindo Ferreiro immigrated to Toronto from Santiago, Chile in 1973. He had earned his Masters Degree in Psychology while studying in Chile and then earned his doctorate at the University of Toronto. Fernando then established his own private practice in Toronto.
While on vacation in San Francisco in 1985, he met Jonathan Steinert and the two very quickly fell in love. Jonathan relocated to Toronto and assisted Fernando with the administrative duties in his practice.
Jonathan was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor in 1990 and after a short period of time, succumbed to his illness.
While not persecuted for his homosexuality in Chile, Fernando felt a certain degree of discrimination in Canada and wished that an organization would promote individuals who, through either the arts or sciences, made a significant contribution to the understanding and acceptance of gays and lesbians in the community.
Fernando chose Toronto’s Lesbian and Gay Community Appeal Foundation (now the Community One Foundation) as the organization to carry out his wishes.
Fernando quietly passed away from AIDS in Casey House on July 2, 1992.
