Simone Thibault, executive director of the Centretown Community Health Centre, was honoured Nov. 10 with an Order of Ottawa award by Mayor Jim Watson at city hall.
The Nova-Scotia born philanthropist has brought her leadership to both regional and provincial organizations such as the Canadian Association of Community Health Centres and the Overbrook-Forbes Community Resource Centre.
Thibault has been running non-profit organizations for the past 25 years and doubled revenue and staffing at the Centretown Community Health Centre during her tenure to expand services. The Cooper Street centre provides health care, counselling, education and health promotion to people living in and around Centretown, the Glebe and Old Ottawa South. It is a particularly important service for homeless and low-income residents of Centretown Ottawa.
“I work with very passionate people who care about people who are down on their luck and have less advantages than us, through no fault of their own,” Thibault explains. “I started working at a shelter for abused women and children and that’s where I started my non-profit career. It really was an eye-opener.”
Thibault says that she was very humbled by the award. “It was nice to be honoured because I have worked for many years to make a difference,” she says. “I have been privileged to work in an area that I really love.”
Another notable recipient of the Order of Ottawa is Ben Babelowsky, an artist and former marketing employee at the Ottawa Citizen. Babelowsky moved from his homeland of Holland to Canada in 1953 and has been living in Ottawa for 52 years. Though the artist says that he paints a little bit of everything, his most distinctive pieces are watercolours that depict local scenes of Ottawa.
Babelowsky has been painting his whole life, donating a considerable amount of the earnings to multiple charities. “I like to give away my art for charity, I like to give money to charity. I’ve been doing this for all my life and it was nice to get recognition for that.”
Kanata Coun. Marianne Wilkinson nominated Babelowsky for the award. “He’s done so much for the community,” she says. “He does things like this all the time — almost every group in Ottawa has a Ben Babelowsky piece,” she laughs.
The Order of Ottawa was established by Mayor Jim Watson in 2012. Coun. Marianne Wilkinson says that the Order of Ottawa is a way of giving a high level distinction to people who have done a lot of charitable things within the city of Ottawa. “What theses people have done for the community is so important that we should be recognizing it,” she says.