Full bibliography

While her name echoes across the pages of legal and constitutional history, we also remember the informal [Trish]. At home, that warm and welcoming place, where the door was always open, and the only rule was make yourself at home. Where her splendid children, Brandon, Mike, Kate and Jack displayed their achievements on the wall of honour, and brought their friends to hang out, share Trish's delicious cooking, and strategize over upcoming sports competitions, and projects. Where other children became her children and where they found a loving, safe and supportive home. Where Trish's favourite coffee was always on offer. We remember her on the road, meeting her on the road, travelling with other women and their children, putting human rights into action in Saskatchewan prisons, seeking justice, or watching with great pride and enormous knowledge the kids' activities at powwows, hockey and lacrosse arenas, soccer fields, or concert halls. We remember her scheming and "schmoking," laughing, and cooking up new ways to thwart the colonizer or defeat the machinations of injustice. This is not to say that Trish avoided the world of policy-making. To the contrary. A key member of the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women in the early 1 990s, she ensured that the voices of Indigenous women were central to the process. Her guidance strongly influenced the Task Force final report and the subsequent establishment of the Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge for Aboriginal women. Trish was a vital expert witness at the Commission of Inquiry into Certain Events at the Prison for Women in Kingston (the Arbour Commission), which investigated the unlawful stripping and shackling of women, imposition on women of lengthy segregation, and their involuntary movement to a men's prison. Nor did her contribution end with the completion of the Task Force and Commission. Trish did not hesitate to bring attention to government shortcomings in realizing the vision of the Task Force and the Arbour inquiry. She was one of the staunchest critics of Correctional Services' divergence from the original inspiration for the Healing Lodge. She worked with the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies and was a trusted advisor and friend to Kim Pate, when they launched a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission against the Government of Canada on behalf of all women serving two years or more. Supported by 27 national and international women's, Aboriginal, and social justice groups, the complaint called for a systemic review and remedy for the discriminatory treatment of women in prisons and the criminal justice system generally.

Num Pages: 8-9 Place: Downsview, Canada Publisher: Inanna Publications and Education Inc.