'They desire a better country.'
This is the motto of the Order of Canada which is considered the cornerstone of the Canadian Honours System. As 2024 came to a close, Governor General Mary Simon appointed 88 individuals to the Order of Canada including one Companion, 24 Officers, and 63 Members.
Among the members was Cobble Hill resident and retired family therapist Dr. Allan Wade, C.M.
"I am very grateful for appointment as a Member of Canada, the more so because it also acknowledges the work of so many of my colleagues, without whom my own work would have been impossible," said Wade. "The nomination was initiated by my colleagues, who conspired behind my back for almost three years.
"The investigators at the Office of the Governor General were very thorough, which gives me comfort. Colleagues in several countries supported the nomination in many ways, which is truly humbling. The Order of Canada is awarded to people who work to make Canada a better country. I really like that sentiment, and there is much to do in this regard."
This prestigious award recognizes people across all sectors of society who have made extraordinary and sustained contributions to the nation. Thanks to nominators across the country, it has celebrated the outstanding achievements and wide-ranging contributions of more than 8,000 individuals since its creation in 1967.
Wade, who is a co-developer of Response-Based Practice, has helped inform practical applications in social, justice and health services in Canada and beyond; he also employs social justice principles to restore dignity after harm.
"Members of the Order of Canada are builders of hope for a better future," said Simon. "Each in their own way, they broaden the realm of possibilities and inspire others to continue pushing its boundaries. Thank you for your perseverance, fearless leadership and visionary spirit, and welcome to the Order of Canada."
Growing up as an army brat, Wade moved around quite a bit when he was younger and attended school in Vancouver. Over the years Wade has held many roles including a ski mechanic in Fernie, working in a medium security prison in Mission, and eventually as a special education teacher in Prince Rupert. After several years of making a difference in the lives of young people, Wade and his partner Cathy moved to Duncan in 1981 where Cathy quickly found work as a teacher and Wade forged a new path as a youth worker in Lake Cowichan, where he met some true advocates for children who were facing adversity in their lives.
"I tried to emulate these folks and found I really loved the work, though I did not feel especially confident in my abilities," said Wade. "There is something that changes you, getting to know young people who are struggling with challenges, who want to belong and protect their loved ones, to live without criticism, and to enjoy the simple things that are so often taken for granted."
Something that Wade and his partner do not take for granted is finding their dream home in Cobble Hill, where they still live happily.
"Its been a great place to raise kids and find community, not least a community of amazing colleagues," said Wade.
One of the amazing colleagues that Wade met while working with Community Options Society, as well as briefly in Alcohol and Drug programs, and child protection for the Ministry of Children and Family Development was Dr. Robin Routledge, a psychiatrist who had also been studying family therapy when they met. Routledge received a lifetime achievement award with the Doctors of Canada last year.
"I knew that the tools I had learned were useful but not enough, and as fate would have it, I then met some people who were also trying to learn, including Robin," said Wade. "Family therapy blew my mind. I had talked with my new friend Dan McGee and a group was formed consisting of friends in probation, child protection, counselling, youth work, and so on."
This group eventually became known as the Orcas Society which still exists today. Wade and his colleagues invited many of the leaders of systemic family therapy, solution-focused therapy, the fifth province approach, narrative therapy, and several others to come to Duncan to take part in the training.
"Our strategy was oddly very effective even though we offered them considerably less than they would have otherwise been paid on the condition that they would also attend a seminar with us so that we could discuss our work," said Wade. "So family therapy took root here, and certainly changed my practice. A whole new set of relationships and larger community was formed by 1983, and many of us have remained close colleagues, and friends since."
Wade has since given up his family therapy practice, which was located in Duncan, and continues to write, provide consultation to colleagues, and training in Response-Based Practice to groups in Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa (New Zealand), Sweden, Denmark, Russia, and elsewhere. Along with some of his colleagues, he has been working on his own writing for an edited book on colleagues' applications of Response-Based Practice across practice settings.
Wade developed the Response-Based Practice approach in the 1990s along with contributions from both Nick Todd, and Linda Coates. This approach involves analyzing social interaction, social context, social responses, and how the individual is responding to and making sense of the complex, rich psycho-social situation. For more information on the Centre For Response-Based Practice visit www.responsebasedpractice.com.
Wade said it was while teaching in Prince Rupert that he first began to dimly see his role in the colonial project.
"All of the children in my special education class were Indigenous, and like many people of my generation, I was fed a pack of lies in the school curriculum about heroic missionaries who braved privation and risked their lives to save the heathens," said Wade. "The comments of the missionary William Duncan fall into this line.
"I was not at all prepared to meet those children, never mind their families. I had no idea who they were or who I might be to them and their families and their ancestors. This kind of thing continues today in many places, including the north, the Yukon, where I have been working for many years. Non-Indigenous professionals are sent into primarily Indigenous communities with little or no training about the cultural or colonial context. In my view, all such professionals should be required to take significant ongoing training provided by local First Nations, who are paid adequately for their time and effort.
Wade left working with alcohol and drug programs to go back to university to earn his Masters degree that led into a PhD. program. This allowed him the opportunity to work at Vancouver Island University where he taught psychology and worked in student services."
Through his work, Wade had the opportunity to meet a number of Indigenous women including April Buffalo Robe, Gillian Harris, Donna Moon, Fran Tait, and Cheryle Henry (president of the Orcas Society) who treated him with utmost generosity yet at the same time with some well-justified suspicion. T
hese women shared with Wade stories of their responses and resistance to violence. This, combined with Wade's PhD work on social interaction, helped him to listen differently while asking better, more “situated”, questions.
Wade said through the Response-Based Practice approach 'therapy' became more a matter of talking accurately about violence, honouring the already existing resistance of “victims/survivors”, and contesting the blaming and pathologizing of “victims/survivors” while understanding the central role of language and culture to wellness.
"They all took me under their wing and I realized more strongly than ever that the tools I had been given in the colonial therapy world were inadequate, profoundly so," said Wade. "Family therapy helped in this regard, but not enough. None of the most widely used therapeutic approaches contain an adequate analysis of violence, let alone the nature of resistance to violence — despite the well-known fact that the experience of violence combined with negative responses from others when the violence is disclosed is the best predictor of obtaining a diagnosis of mental disorder and illness.
"Suffering and resistance are responses to violence and oppression that point to already existing capacities, cultural teachings on the land, that can be gently honoured."
Over the span of his career Wade's work has also encompassed a testimony to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and LGBT2SI+ Persons at the request of the Liard Aboriginal Women's Society.
He's also done an analysis that challenges Stockholm Syndrome.
"I cannot possibly convey the debts I happily owe to the Indigenous people who have kindly taken me under their wing even as some of them have come for assistance," said Wade. "Ann Maje Raider, E.D. of the Liard Aboriginal Women’s Society invited me to Watson Lake, Yukon, in 1998, and we have working together ever since."
After many years of close and detailed conversations sitting in circle “on the land” at Tu-Cho as one example, Raider and her sisters and other women of LAWS asked Wade to testify at the National Inquiry on their behalf at the meeting in Winnipeg about child protection practice.
"In those circles we heard accounts of horrid violence and honoured the immense dignity, insatiable desire for justice, and ongoing resistance of Indigenous people, adults and children during their incarceration in the prison camps that are wrongly called residential schools," said Wade. "Indigenous people across Canada have been struggling to reform child protection practices for many years.
"We at the centre for Response-Based Practice have also been working to that end with some promising results in Duncan and elsewhere, thanks to Susan Predy and others who work with local child protection. Dr. Cathy Richardson and Dr. Shelly Dean are two of the centre's colleagues who have worked extensively in this area."
Through Wade's work, he also talks about how language is used to conceal violence, based in part on the work of his colleague Dr. Coates, even in the criminal codes of Canada and many other countries. He facilitated discussions on how the notion of “trauma”, which can be used to acknowledge suffering, can also be used to conceal resistance, and support the colonial practice of locating deficits in Indigenous people suffering from both violence and racism.
"We hear a great deal now about inter-generational trauma but very little about inter-generational resistance, despite the fact that well known Indigenous writers, such as George Manuel who has been stressing the importance of that resistance for many years, at least back to the year I graduated from high school," said Wade. "Just as have black writers. I should point out that going back to Frederick Douglas, and Zora Neale Hurston or Stella Dadzie’s recent book, A Kick in the Belly which is a wonderful example. It's sobering to realize that the curriculum I was fed as a normal Canadian boy was so completely at odds with the writing of Indigenous leaders and writers and even black writers at that time. We could have done much better then, and we can do much better now."
When Wade is not making a huge impact through his work, he enjoys hanging out with his partner Cathy and his dogs at home, or in the community. Whether it's visiting one of their five children, reading in a coffee shop or going for a walk in the woods, they always find a balance of work and fun combined with travel. Wade looks forward to being presented with the medal in person at a ceremony planned for later this spring.
"Receiving the Order of Canada appointment has old friends and colleagues reaching out to say hello and congratulations, which is just wonderful," said Wade. "Some more visiting will be in order, and moving forward we will have lots of projects on the go."
