Friends at York University honoured Varpu Lindström

Scholarly productivity, often in rather unexplored areas, administrative skills, abilities to bring warring parties together, and a huge input into the cultural awareness of Finland here in Canada. These are some of the observations about professor Varpu Lindström as heard in the remarks by Dr Sheila Embleton, her long time colleague and friend, at a reception at York University on June 15, 2010.

Vapaa Sana publishes the speech by Dr Embleton with minor abbreviations.

We are here to celebrate Varpu's contribution to York University, in her many different roles at York. Won’t repeat all that you are going to hear from others, but will just try to mention a few things from my point of view, and then move on to her role in the Finnish community. Her CV has all the usual scholarship in conventional venues such as journals etc. in good quantity – but what is different is her ability to “popularize” her research findings, in all the positive senses of that term. She has been a frequent contributor to national radio in Finland (Yleisradio is the equivalent of the CBC, although it actually has had even more of a monopoly until recently). I myself have heard her on radio in Finland, and know that the public listens – one picks up random overheard conversations e.g. on buses that refer to her interesting interviews, or finds one of them the subject of dinner conversation. Her biggest triumph in this regard is of course her work for Kelly Saxberg’s NFB film “Letters from Karelia” – and I was thrilled to have had one very early involvement in that, the beginning really, when I was the first to translate the first handwritten Russian letter into English for her – we both knew at that moment what a find this was, and I was personally thrilled to watch from a distance as it developed into a film, a large SSHRCC-project, an exchange program for York with a university in Karelia, etc.

She has had many York involvements – Interim Director of School of Social Work when they needed to come together preferably under a sympathetic and skilled outsider – and she left it a very different and healed place. She was a very successful Chair of Women’s Studies in its fledgling years – when there were many issues to resolve and systems to establish. She established fund-raising priorities and strategies for the School, long before fundraising was a priority right across the University. She was an active and engaged Master of Atkinson College, never an easy task. She spent two years on York's Board of Governors as elected representative from Senate. She was chair of History at Atkinson, coordinator of Canadian Studies at Atkinson. She has been a member of innumerable committees of all different types and at all different levels and areas of the University. Sound, objective, fair – chose her for decanal search committee for Osgoode. Proven ability to administer not only in the technical sense (and I don’t mean to belittle that, it takes a special type of skill and a lot of dedication and patience), but also to bring warring parties together. She was recognized for all of this and more with a University Professorship a couple of years ago. She has never been afraid to take up a challenge, even a rather unlikely one, if she feels she can help either or both of students or one of the many communities of which she is an integral part. She exhibits perpetual willingness to serve – and we see this not only at York but also in the Finnish community.

So while she was working 24/7 for York University, I have to tell you that she was also working 24/7 for the Finnish community in Toronto, Ontario, and Canada. I joined the Canadian Friends of Finland Education Foundation, in 1991 and have been its President since 1995. This Foundation exists for the sole purpose of raising funds to support the Finnish Studies Program at the University of Toronto – which involves not just trying to establish a permanent Chair in Finnish Studies at the University of Toronto, but also supporting scholarships, the library, lecture series, etc. Varpu was the key player, back in the mid 1980s, in organizing first the Canadian Friends of Finland (CFF), which promotes cultural and academic relationships between the two countries, and then the core group that formed the CFFEF, dedicated particularly to the support of the Finnish Studies Program at the University of Toronto. This involved much lobbying in both Canada and Finland, to get people to support what seemed at the time like an impossible goal. The first step was to convince the University of Toronto that a Finnish Studies program was needed – this was done. The program has subsequently prospered, and it now has the third largest enrolments in North America. The second set of steps involved establishing a firm funding base for the Program; this was accomplished through a combination of funding from the Government of Finland, from the CFFEF, and from the University of Toronto, with an eventual goal of raising enough funds to establish a permanent Chair of Finnish Studies at the University of Toronto. And it was for this purpose that Varpu was able to rally a very busy group of volunteers, dedicated to the cause, inspired by her vision and her own hard work. Over the years, that group has raised over $1 million in support of this Program, some used for ongoing support and some put into an endowment towards establishing the Chair. At a ceremony at the end of February, we handed over our final cheque, fulfilling (on time) our contractual obligation to the University of Toronto to establish the Chair. This is a clear demonstration of the value and impact of Varpu’s volunteerism, leadership, and vision. Both CFF and CFFEF have been widely recognized for years, both in Canada and in Finland, as key to the maintenance of cultural linkages between the two countries. Before the Finnish Embassy had a cultural attaché in Ottawa, CFF, which had grown from merely a Toronto organization, to one with branches also in Ottawa, Vancouver, and Montréal, partly fulfilled that role. Until a few years ago, Finland had a consulate-general in Toronto, but since its demise, CFF has once again become the most prominent player on the Finnish and Finnish-Canadian cultural scene in Toronto. Neither of these two organizations would have been founded, let alone would have prospered and been able to accomplish all they have done today, in strengthening cultural and academic relationships between Canada and Finland, without Varpu’s organization skills, the dedication, and the long-term voluntarism. The Finnish government recognized her contributions many years ago by making her a Knight First Class of the Order of the White Rose of Finland. Thank you, Varpu, for all you have done for York University and the Finnish community in Toronto.

Sheila Embleton is the former VP Academic and Provost at York, currently Special Advisor to the President at York University. She has known Varpu Lindström both at York and in CFF/CFF-EF contexts for about two decades