By Allison Chandler
An excited seven-year-old Isobel Anderson has the lead singing part to her school’s big production. During the dress rehearsal, the director gives her a new instruction she doesn’t quite understand. The young singer must stand behind the curtain while a lighter-skinned girl lip-syncs to Isobel’s voice on stage.
But a disagreeing teacher takes her aside and says: “Don’t ever let anyone put you behind the curtain again.”
This was a defining moment in Anderson’s life, which didn’t make sense to her until later on. Once you get to know Isobel Anderson it becomes clear that with every challenge she has ever faced, she has been able to survive and move forward.
“If the door is not closed, then it’s not no,” she says.
She was born into the apartheid system in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), which consisted of many laws that allowed the ruling white minority to segregate, exploit and terrorize the large non-white majority.
Today Anderson is an acting staff sergeant for the Ottawa Police Service. She is the type of officer you want in your neighbourhood. With the negative stereotypes that police are intimidating and unapproachable, Anderson breaks the barrier by fostering good relationships between the police and the community.
“We have to realize one is a part of the other,” says Anderson. “I’m a police officer but I’m also a community member.”
Anderson’s experience has proven beneficial to policing because she understands what it is like to be marginalized.
“My biggest strength is connecting with people because I can relate to their hardship,” says Anderson.
Before Anderson immigrated to Canada in 1989, she had been working as a young police officer during difficult times in Rhodesia. Although of mixed race, she was considered black.
In 1978, Anderson became the first black woman patrol officer in Rhodesia. Although women were allowed to police, the highest position a black woman could attain was sergeant major.
“It was a big step for minorities,” says Anderson.
This experience traveled with her to Canada.
In Ottawa, she works with a Community-Police Action Committee, an advisory body representing a partnership between the police and visible minorities.
Members meet and bring issues to the table with ideas to make a better community. She also works with Critical Incident-Critical Situation that was developed to understand and thereby diffuse causes of tension between the police and racial, cultural and ethnic minority groups.
Her good friend, Acting Sgt. Debbie Miller, says Anderson’s experiences have helped her become a good police officer.
“She’s coming from hard times. She knows what low is, to be down and out and struggling through things because she’s lived that,” says Miller.
When Anderson first applied to be a police officer in Rhodesia, she used her father’s white last name in hopes of getting an interview. She says this was for shock value and it worked. She boldly sat through the interview suggesting that she could do everything a white officer could do.
She says even though she was shaking on the inside, on the outside it didn’t show.
Unaware of the potential repercussions of her action, she was called back for further interviews.
“I knew that I was gate crashing; I knew I would be insulted, but I had to make a choice when they welcomed me,” says Anderson.
She says the strength to hide her fear came from her mother.
“If you know you are hungry and all you’ve had is bread and water but you’re clean on the outside, how can someone know that you didn’t have what they had?” Anderson was told while growing up.
This type of strength stayed with her even when she faced prejudice in Canada. Initially, Anderson received ignorant comments from some people who suggested she would go up the ranks simply because of employment equity. Rather than let people get under her skin, Anderson has her own approach for handling prejudicial comments. Her strategy is to re-position the comment so that the offending person can see how it affects the other human being rather than accusing them.
“She’s more compassionate, charismatic and understanding than some people who never had to deal with adversity,” says Sgt. Ron Bos, who was Anderson’s acting sergeant when she first started.
“My biggest strength is connecting with people because I can relate to their hardship.”
-Acting Staff Sgt. Isobel Anderson
Bos also helped Anderson lobby the government for legislation. In 1997, Anderson was punctured with a needle while searching a robbery suspect.
Her efforts led to a bill passed in the Ontario legislature, which makes it mandatory for records of infected people to be released if they have accidentally or intentionally infected another person.
Her goal of looking out for the rights of victims led to an Ottawa Women in Law Enforcement award, the Margaret Eve Award for Leadership, in 2004.
Anderson’s effort to spearhead a bill doesn’t surprise Miller.
“If anything is going to happen to her, she’ll make the best of it and she’ll surprise other people and herself,” says Miller, who met Anderson almost 13 years ago in their first recruitment class. Since then, Miller says she’s seen Anderson go through different periods of her life and come out on top no matter how hard it’s been.
“I’ll get her on Oprah someday because she deserves to be there,” laughs Miller.
Anderson’s complete lack of ego is also what makes her likeable and effective.
By comparing her position as an officer to that of an ambassador, she helps to remove the barriers that community members often feel when dealing with the police. Sometimes Anderson doesn’t wear her uniform because she says it can be intimidating.
She also makes her office a safe place for neighbourhood children to visit and a place for people to go so they don’t have to suffer in silence.
Anderson’s interest in policing goes back to her childhood.
She remembers when a police officer visited her home and yelled at her when she interrupted with useful information. She says she was trying to help and was bothered by how he treated her.
Today in Ottawa, she says a police officer would probably thank a child for helping out.
When Anderson isn’t working, she stays involved with the community by attending events and helping out where she can.
Although her three children have grown up, she says this doesn’t mean her responsibility to be engaged in the community ends.
She has a vested interest in Ottawa because she’s happy to be living here.
“I’ve seen so much death, that I love life,” says Anderson. “When I leave the earth, I want to be able to say I didn’t do everything I could have, but I gave it my best shot.”