[00:00:00] Ellington Brown: Welcome to SpeakUP!! International with Rita Burke and Elton Brown!

[00:00:20] Rita Burke: This is African Heritage Month. For what we know fondly is Black History Month. I think it's timely. That we have Tina Garnet with us because she is seventh generation Canadian, black Canadian, and she'll be telling us her story. Now, Tina is a passionate advocate who has spent nearly three decades championing marginalized communities.

She's a descendant of Charlotte and James Handy. Tina is the current executive director of the Gene Augustine Center for Young Women's Empowerment. Throughout her career, Tina has been dedicated to breaking down systemic barriers and on SpeakUP! International, we prefer if her guest tell their own stories, and so I welcome Tina Garnet to tell her story on SpeakUP! International.

Welcome, welcome, welcome! 

[00:01:22] Tina Garnett: Thank you Rita!

[00:01:24] Ellington Brown: Welcome to SpeakUP!! International. Can you share with us how your ancestry has shaped your passion for advocating for the marginalized communities? 

[00:01:40] Tina Garnett: I was just having a conversation with someone in regard to continuing my own education as an executive coach at the Rotman School of Management. And in that, the privilege of being able to go to school post-secondary school, my grandmother. Was not able, she was taken outta school in grade four, I believe, three or four, if I recall.

She couldn't read. She didn't know. And so the privilege I have to pursue my dreams is my ancestors' greatest dreams. Because they were not allowed, that did not mean they were not informed. I malt at a place of reminding myself. That the same school system that denied access cannot give me the value of my own humanity.

That value of myself will come from myself as a result of the teachings and principles and values of my ancestors and how I was schooled and taught and brought up. And so that is a value of integrity that I did not learn from school. So what I do is because, and in spite of what my ancestors went through, 

[00:02:58] Rita Burke: that is an incredible response to that particular query and question, Tina, because sometimes US people, black people of African heritage don't realize that we do have some privilege.

At least the ability, the opportunity to read and write and to voice our concerns gives us that edge sometimes. So thank you for responding in that way. Now talk about the communities that you serve. Talk to us a little bit about those who those people are that you serve 

[00:03:38] Tina Garnett: Primarily. I've spent 30 years now creating spaces for.

Marginalized is what we call them or what system or society calls them for racialized black women, usually black and indigenous women and children. I have made it, I wouldn't say my calling, but a dedication to give back. So I. In my role at the Gene Augustine Center, we support young women seven to 17 which is aligned with my whole mandate of education and school both of life and of educ and of institutions.

I have a firm belief that when we empower those without agency, we empower the future. And when we empower young women to see themselves in places they've never been. Able to be represented, only imagined, what could our future look like? And I dare to dream. And I've always been that person that when we think about give thanks for what we have and remind ourselves of where we deserve to be, and then we figure out how we're gonna get there.

And so that's where I've always landed, is working with women and children and those without voices.

[00:04:55] Ellington Brown: I think that's a very good place to begin and to move forward. I think we used that expression right before we started our official conversation. So you've been working with equity and inclusion for the past 30 years, so what pivotal experiences have most significantly influenced your career trajectory? 

[00:05:26] Tina Garnett: Being a co-founder of an indigenous youth organization in Northern British Columbia in the early two thousands at a time when indigenous women were going missing and we alert her and missing and murdered truth be said aloud. Coming from London, Ontario was one of the few black families. Then I knew racism.

I knew racism. I lived racism. I'd watched it every day. I'd watched the impact on my family. I went out west during the Harris days as a widowed single mom with two young boys. I needed to provide for them. And so I went west, like many of us, trying to find a future. And then I ended up in, in northern BC indigenous community.

There were signs that said, if you're Indian, be outta town by six o'clock. I didn't know about Sundown Towns at that time. I didn't know about Red Circle districts. I only knew about racism and living it and trying to survive it as a black person in London, Ontario, going to British Columbia during the early two thousands where I went to more funerals in one year for young indigenous women, I.

I witnessed systemic violence from the legal system. The silence of the social system. I was shook. I was shook to my very core. So that introduced me to systemic barriers coming back when the call came from my family that, you have the grandchildren, it's time to come home. And my mom was getting older and she wasn't well.

And so I came home. It was in that year of the gun. I was in BC for the late nineties, excuse me, and I came back in the early two thousands and I had left, but came back to Toronto and I remember landing and there was a sign, a newspaper clipping about the violence and thinking, huh, it's the same as what I left but for black people.

And I now understood. Racial hierarchy. I now understood white supremacy. I can. I had began an undergrad focused on indigenous studies and women's studies to understand, why people who look like me don't live long. Why were era and fungible? Why my family was my family and had the issues that many of our black families had, I didn't understand and it was personalized for me.

And so coming back. After I didn't complete an undergrad, but I co-founded that agency. I came back as a result of a legal case that I was part of that involved a sitting judge at that time. And it's a, and it's a public story, so I'm not speaking out of turn, judge Ramsey was his name. And the level of violence he had that he was able to enact on First Nations women and girls, and I came back to Toronto, I.

I was watching the same thing in housing again, that violence, that targeting vulnerable women who were generally mothers who were more susceptible then to that level of discrimination that happens when you don't have capital, when you don't have agency, when you don't have resources, and when you are further from that point of power and privilege, the less agency you have, the less rights you have, the less systems that are at your call to support you.

I came back in the two thousands and was witnessing the same thing within black communities, indoor sex trade. I had focused on women being trafficked in northern B.C., indigenous women in the sex trade and being commercially exploited and so forth. But seeing it in housing here in Toronto, seeing it in the housing and homelessness community, I was, I didn't get it.

Then I remember a point in my career where I realized I was stuck as a black single mom. This was it. I'd reached the ceiling. I had went as far as I could on a college diploma and undergrad incomplete degree, and I went back to school. I. It was in 2016 and I went back and to do my, to finish my master's degree, and I focused on identifying the systemic barriers for black and indigenous women in trauma services.

And I focused on that to understand why people didn't care about the missing and murdered indigenous women that I would call in missing persons report, and it would be dismissed. People didn't care about the women that were being left on the side of highways and minus 40 degrees by police off or CMP officers.

And I came back here to witness the same thing and I was like, why don't people care about us? Why are we dying? And in droves? Why are more black people in kidney failure? So I didn't understand these things, but I was watching my family go down. So I went to school. I learned about the social system.

I learned about, redlining districts. My apologies. I learned about sundown towns. I learned about the commercial the commercialization of social discrimination. And it's a, it's an industry here. It's the non-for-profit industrialization complex is what they call it. It makes billions of dollars by housing black and red bodies, black, brown and red bodies in institutions, and hiring white people to work in them.

So for instance, in any government institution, you must have an undergrad. Over 90% of those undergrads are white, and over 84% are women. But yet over 90% of people in social services are black and indigenous men, we're still housing. We're just being housed differently now. So it shook me. So those two points, I would say have been instrumental in what I do and reminding folks that we are not what the system has told us we are.

And I am honored to hold a reflection up to everyone I pass to show them the value that we have in humanity. And if we offer each other just positive regard, where would we be as a society? So those two things have impacted me. That's a long story. 

[00:11:44] Rita Burke: You said a lot of very important things, Tina, but the one that sticks out for me, the one that will be unforgettable, is that we are not who the system say we are, and indeed we are not.

We determine who we are. And I am hearing from you that you give voice, you amplify the voices of marginalized teacher, people who you say have no agency or perhaps don't even know they have agency. And that certainly is giving back to our community and on SpeakUP! International, we have conversations with people who.

Champion situations in our community so I thank you for that. Why don't to tell us who are James and Charlotte handy?

[00:12:34] Tina Garnett: I have a picture of one of them over here. So even that, my own story, I didn't know my story has, I would ask my grandmother, what was your mother like? What was your grandmother like? And she'd like, girl, you asked too many questions. And so I, I learned that the elders in my family didn't like to be asked a lot of questions, that it brought up a lot of stories for them.

I remember going up to Collingwood and seeing a sign for the Sheffield Black Cultural Museum, and I knew that it was part of my family because we would go to these family reunions and they would be there. I was little back then and life happens and you turn away and more than your family.

And so I didn't remember it. And so I remember going there and I hopped the fence. And inside there was this building that had these broken up tombstones on it, and one of them was James Handy, and something moved in my body. I had no idea that he was, that I was the descendant of, but I felt a pull.

But it was all broken up. And then someone, years go by, someone sent me a video of is this your family? And it was something about the voices of the dead of Princeville or something. Speakers of the Dead of Priceville. And in it was this potato family potato farmer. Husband and wife telling the story how they had bulldozed this black church cemetery and used the tombstones to line their basement floor with so they could walk across it to get to the box of potatoes that they had grown over that cemetery.

And Rita this wife turned to her husband, was like, those were the best potatoes ever. Do you remember dear? And I remember being like, oh, wait a minute. And the James Handy tombstone came up and my body again. And so then I called my cousin, who I knew growing up and I said, I haven't seen you in 20 years.

'cause my mom had passed. And that matriarch and how that happens in family. So I just called her up out of the blue, said, I'm gonna be up there. I'm running a training. Can I stop by? And so I asked questions. I've always asked questions and I learned that James Handy was the son of Charlotte Handy, who had found freedom on Oro Ante Blue Mountain Road.

And James Handy was the husband of the daughter of Charlotte Handy, who was known to. Do quite well with the shotgun. So the story goes and how that came into our family. I then, as family, do we write our stories? We have our little books here and there, and I put the snippets together. So they were my great grandparents.

Maybe one more. Great actually. Because I'm seven. One more. Great. 

[00:15:35] Ellington Brown: One more. 

[00:15:37] Tina Garnett: One more greatness. 

[00:15:38] Ellington Brown: Oh, okay. We'll, and we can go with that. That's not a problem. I wanna talk a little bit about the strategy at Sick Kids. And this is about the EDI. Yes thing. So can you elaborate on the challenges and successes that you've encountered while implementing the first EDI strategy at the Hospital for Sick Kids?

[00:16:06] Tina Garnett: Thank you. I was the inaugural executive lead and strategic advisor of EDI, equity, diversity and inclusion. I will say it was the first executive position that had been created in a mainstream institution. There had generally been other diversity of directors and so forth, so sick kids being as progressive as they are led the conversation of positioning it there.

We developed the first anti-racism policy and as well as gender affirming care, recognizing that sick kids has an adolescent trans non-binary clinic, and so supporting young people who don't fit that binary opposition while coming into that clinic. We had to, we supported folks in understanding trans identity and gender affirming care.

As part of that EDI strategy, we also had conversations about health equity and data. And who owns the data? Because one of the things that, that many black folks know is we may be counted, but that doesn't mean we're included. And so what does that really mean? And who owns that data? And what is the purpose of counting me if we're not changing things?

We've been counting black people living in poverty for years, but yet here we are, we're still living in poverty. Underrepresented folks in your community. And so within that strategy, it was multi-pronged because we knew it couldn't just be about a black or white issue, but it had to be about not only representation but maintaining. Because if you're hiring folks into positions, but yet they're not staying, we have to ask the question as to why are they leaving?

And I created the strategy and I was there for just over two years, maybe two and a half years. And it was in instrumental in changing lives, in, in creating conversations. And it was also done in just after 2020 and where all the world was paused. And we were paused for two major reasons, and we were paused because of COVID and then George Floyd. But we would not have had the same global revolution if we were not in isolation, if we were not locked up. George Floyd was one of hundreds of black men who die every year beneath the boot of oppression and violence. We couldn't change the channel from his violence. That is why the world stopped and so sick kids led the conversation in many.

Spaces of how and where to create safety for black communities, for indigenous communities. Leading health transformation conversations with northern indigenous communities on how to implement virtual telepsychiatry health, how to navigate the jurisdictional boundaries of federal re regulations and provincial healthcare.

Who fits where so many of these conversations were held at Sick Kids. 

[00:19:12] Rita Burke: That George Floyd story became a movement. It wasn't just an event, it became a movement. And I like what you said about being counted but not included. That is profound. You currently work. For the Gene Progress Team organization, tell us about some of the programs you implement for those young women, please.

[00:19:41] Tina Garnett: Now see, this is where I get excited. These little faces, they are seven to 17. So that is a whole gamut for anyone who's been around young people. So we run a mentorship. Lulu is the name. My next big task is I want Lulu to sponsor lulu. So Lulu stands for look up and lift up when you look up.

Then when you bring another one up with you, that is our responsibility as elders. And dare I say, I'm getting into that realm soon. So our mentorship, our afterschool, we provide free afterschool programs every day for seven to 17 year olds. Cooking and science and TIC and social entrepreneurship.

Civic engagement. They, the young people are having conversations in regards to their housing rights. Southie, Toboco is underserved and we are living within condo land that are not sufficient for families, but we're now over housed because we can't afford to have the housing any longer here.

And so as we watch the concrete get higher. Where are they? And so we lead these conversations of civic engagement with our young people who are now having these conversations with their families. We are working with our three schools and creating mental health supports, recognizing that my time in Sick Kids taught me that young women are falling again in the gaps.

Eating disorder, self-abuse, substance use off the charts, but we're not talking about mental illness in our communities. Because of various cultural taboos, you're overreacting. We don't get that. That's a white person illness. When we talk about the impacts of racism and sexism, that is a two-prong analysis that black, indigenous, and racialized women are living beneath both, whether from our own community or from non racialized communities, that discrimination is two prong.

The further you get, whether you're disabled and queer or non-binary, the further you become isolated. And so creating the space for all of us to show up in the multiple unique ways that we hold. 

[00:21:49] Ellington Brown: I wonder now that this conversation has moved in this direction about your work with the Canadian Senate and features and publications like McLean's magazines influenced your approach to EDI Incentive?

[00:22:09] Tina Garnett: That one again, I,

it's interesting to me that yes I was. I was recognized in having these conversations and being the first, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna push back a little and say that I was only recognized because we were in that critical time. I was only having these conversations because people were now listening.

But I know that my grandmother knew that she had a whole different experience because she was black and a woman. I just had the theoretical framework. Called systemic oppression called misogyny, noir, or intersectionality. I've been quoted as saying Intersectionality's not new.

Sojourner Truth, quoted it in 1851 when she said, ain't I a woman? She was talking about the same thing. Ain't I a woman? Don't I deserve safety, dignity, and rights because my blackness erodes my womanhood. Then we were talking about it in the seventies with the Black River Ka and Queer Black Women in the Stone Gate revolution, where queer women, trans women were saying, are we not women of value?

So we have been pushing back on these systems. I just happened to join the game and find the tools in the language that brought me to the conversation. And so in that, I, I. I was my ancestors' greatest dream to learn the game and pick up the tools that would make it different. Dr. Augustine, who I am surrounded by, has been having these conversations for time.

She knew it. She knew it as an educated woman coming from Grenada that the only way she was gonna get to Canada to a better life was to come through a domestic scheme, to be a servant, to be a maid, to someone who's an educated woman. She played the game. Now look at us. And so that is not, as I look over at the picture River, people have said, why don't you change the office?

And I was like, not a picture will be moved. I am surrounded in the history of black womanhood. Every woman I have ever stood beside is standing with me in this office. And so my job to give back. Is essentially look up, lift up. I didn't create it. That program was existed before me. But everything we do here is about holistic, organic self-development, whatever that may look like.

Our literacy program, we teach financial literacy because has black women told as racialized women, math isn't for you, science isn't for you. So we run a STEAM program. We run a STEM program. It's one of our four foundations. We create spaces where women have never been allowed and give them the tools to thrive, not just survive.

And when you are thriving, you create change. You create healthy families, healthy communities, healthy spaces, and dare I say, a healthy world someday. 

[00:25:27] Rita Burke: You said that Dr. Jean played the game and it is really interesting that, I guess playing the game is in her DNA in order to survive and ultimately thrive and prosper.

[00:25:44] Tina Garnett: No question about that. So yes, people who have come here a long time ago, for whatever reason, they have learned that quite. Clearly. Now tell us what does Black History Month mean to you and for you? 

It's an opportunity for other people to learn about the contributions. Let me start there because I know I'm black every day. Black History is about reminding folks that Black History is Canadian history. Black history is about all of our history. There is a quote, I can't think of his name, so I won't even try.

[00:26:19] Tina Garnett: When the hunt is told from the lion's perspective is that it, the glory of the hunt will look very different, right? And so we have learned our history. I remember the first time I learned about black history, I was in grade eight, mr. Wilson's class, and we were learning about the transatlantic slave trade.

And he said, Tina's family were slaves. Tina comes from slaves. And I was like, what? What? Nuh, and so I went home, I guess a stand up only black kid in class stand up. Everyone looked at me and said, Tina's family comes from slaves. That was my introduction to my own history. I was traumatized, horrified and ashamed.

I went home and ask my mom. She reminded me. We were the first pharmacist. We were the first. We were the first. We were the first. We were the first. We were the first. We were the first, whether in my own lineage, whether in other people's lineage. My mom had never had the opportunity to finish high school, but I had a, she had a house that had a library.

And books upon. Books upon books. She was one of the most well-read people, well-read, uneducated people I'd ever met. She knew her history when she passed. I gave her books to a girl school in Ghana for Libraries Without Borders because I knew what it meant to have that. And in a world that says women don't deserve to have knowledge.

I wanted that to go not just into a goodwill box, not just into a value village, but to a place where they had to fight for the right to learn, to read their own history in order to write their own future.

[00:28:11] Ellington Brown: I wonder now that you've talked about your mom and how she was a ferocious reader. What motivated you to pursue that Master's degree? Focusing on accessible social systems. And how has this academic movement or achievement informed your professional practice? 

[00:28:35] Tina Garnett: I grew up as a kid with a learning disability, so I never thought I could, first of all. I was told I couldn't. They told my mom, school was not for me. It was a wasted time. I'm only in my, I'm not even in my sixties yet. I'm 57, so that's not that long ago where I was not encouraged to go to school by the school system.

And so I believed it, it took me three times to finish high school, but I did, and I did in my twenties, and I did as a result of seeing my children that I wanted them to know. They could do anything regardless of what people told them. So the pursuit of a master's degree was a dream I had to learn. I love reading.

I'm a ferocious reader. Like my mother, I read constantly. But I didn't like school, but I didn't understand the difference. But I'd love to learn. So I went to York University, the environmental studies program, which is a multidisciplinary focus. So it allowed me to pick and choose what I wanted to do, but I remember it was in August that my mom had went in to have she had renal failing failure like many other black folks for medical biases.

And she had to go in and get the tube removed. I got a call saying, your mama's turn. She has sepsis and I had no idea what sepsis was. Sepsis is a disease that happened because as a result of neglect, that's and that's what it's she went in for a quick surgery, 15 minutes. She plummeted afterwards.

And so I didn't understand. So she's in and out of consciousness and I got accepted while she was in the hospital and I was like, it's no big deal. I'm not gonna do it. And she made me promise, and she knew, and she said, teach, you gotta do this. And I was like, mommy, no big deal. It's no big deal, mommy.

And she was like, no, teach you gotta do this for me, for all the women who have never been able to. And

I, and she died the next day. And had I not have made that promise to her on her deathbed, I don't know if I would've. To be honest, but when I did, I knew I had to finish not just for her, not just for myself, but to understand why. I learned a word there called fungible, and there was a quote in a book that said black women were fungible.

And I was like that's a weird word. So I looked it up and it means easily to be disposed of because of the multiple reg, you could refill it. They compared us to a barrel of wheat. There was so much wheat in the field that if you lost a barrel, you wouldn't even notice it. It could be replaced.

Black women were so easily to be disposed of because we're so easily to be replaced. That hurt me as I watched many of my family. You can't replace them. And so I knew that I had to do this. I knew I had to learn. I knew I had to learn how to speak up., especially when my belly shook because of all the times people couldn't.

And so that's why I continued to do what I do. I wasn't a kid who, I wasn't that kid who was always talking. I actually had, I had to stutter. So I had to learn how to speak properly in order to speak in public. I knew I had to that I owed it to all the women who couldn't. And so here we are.

[00:32:20] Rita Burke: Tina Garnet. You are telling us an extraordinary story. It's a story that is obviously rooted and grounded in Canadian history, Canadian culture, everything Canadian and on SpeakUP! International. We have conversations with people who inspire and inform and educate, and I think that's happening today through your story. So I want you to share with our listeners two things that Tina Garnet likes her about herself. Two things that you like about Tina Garnet.

[00:33:05] Tina Garnett: I love my commitment to joy and my superhuman power of tenderness. Just be kind. It's not as easy as it sounds. Someone said, resiliency. I was like, it's not resiliency. I just refuse to quit. That's, I'm oh, it's in your genes. I'm like no. There's nothing superhuman about being black. We just wanna live too. So it's not this. We got some superhuman gene within us that allowed us to get up every day.

We just wanna live. We just wanna see our families live. We just want the same joy and peace. That we witness in other spaces.

[00:33:48] Rita Burke: I hear you! We want to live! We want to live with joy as well. That's critical. Not just we, not just that we exist and survive. We have to enjoy the world that we are in and it's critical and I, so we need to teach young people, you have a right to be here.

Try to enjoy it as best as you can. 

[00:34:09] Tina Garnett: So to the young women every day who are twisted up because they didn't get the right mark and they're not the right color and they're not the right, this, you are perfect. You are perfect just as you are. Because do you remember that poster that used to have that little black boy that was like, I know I'm good 'cause God don't make no junk That hung up in my house.

I can't find it anymore, but I'm looking forward again to find a wall because we need to be reminded of God by every name. And religion did not make a mistake. I don't care what you call him, her, it didn't make a mistake. We are here for a purpose. What you do with that purpose is up to you. You could be a victim to your life or you could be a victor over your life.

I don't. Resistance comes in all shapes and sizes. Silence and loud. There's no wrong way to do your life except to quit. 

[00:35:02] Ellington Brown: Absolutely. I. I agree with you 100%. In your experience, what key components of providing effective psychoeducational cognitive support to leaders aiming to create equitable work spaces?

[00:35:22] Tina Garnett: My time at Sick Kids, I would, I had a successful career as a consultant and a mentor. But I also witnessed some of the smartest people in the world literally have a hard time with these hard conversations. And so my goal was to offer them the same tools that I had to learn how to walk into the room as the only black kid, as the only, and have these hard conversations and be like what about, but when you're in positions of leadership.

You're expected to know. You're expected to know how racism is normalized. You're expected to know how sexism shows up in labor pools. You're expected to know how racism and sexism impacts research, whether it's the right. So there's all these spaces that leaders that I witnessed didn't know,

and I feel honored that. Working at Sick Kids, Dr. Ronnie Cohen, the CEO admitted he didn't know. And to me I was like, I wanna work with you. So I learned the tools, and so going to school at Rotmans to get my excellence in leadership is an opportunity a, to support other middle management to move up in their career because of the reality is there are many racialized middle management managers and directors who hit that ceiling.

So I provide the skills. I'm a HR professional. So I provide the skills as an HR manager on how to navigate systems within employment and employment standards, but also to have that racialized conversation on how and where to push. So I support middle management in that executive training but I also support executives on how to have the hard conversations to show the vulnerabilities to create safety and accessibility and inclusion within their labor pool.

Because if we don't our demographics are changing. And if we're not changing with our demographics, how are we having the highest quality of process and quality improvement of process and outcomes if you're not asking the hard conversations as to why isn't it working? And so I support them as a past trauma coach with an HR mandate as an executive coach to have these hard conversations.

[00:37:46] Rita Burke: You said that our demographics are changing, demographics have changed. Question about that. And yes, it continues to change and you're about the hard conversations. Isn't it a good thing to at least admit that you don't know? But yes, there needs to be a willingness to know. To bring people into your tribe, into your circle, that will help you to know.

So yes, if they were taught it in schools, like you said, you weren't taught and stuff in schools, and most of us were not taught it in schools. But we need to get to the point where we say, I don't know. However I want to learn. I'm willing to learn. I'm humble. I'm humble enough to want to learn. 

[00:38:41] Tina Garnett: Agreed. 

[00:38:43] Rita Burke: So tell us about the best bit of advice you have ever been given.

[00:38:50] Tina Garnett: It's funny how those granites languages come in. You know why God gave you two ears in one mouth Because you're supposed to listen more and talk less. So that was the first one. Listen with an open mind and an open heart. Listen with open curiosity to learn to hear what you don't know.

I find a lot of people are listening to, to prove you're wrong. To prove they're right. Not even you're wrong, but to prove they're right. They're just listen to we're listen to see how you're wrong. Admit, you don't know. I have been the first, in many roles, the first black queer person in KPI's Labor Union as a chair, the first black executive at Sick Kids. The first, and I'm like, it's exhausting. I'm not the first, I'm just the loudest right now. And sometimes you have to speak up especially when your voice shakes, I think it was Audrey Lorde who said that.

And so speak up even if you're like the only one in the room. 'cause we're generally the only, and offer it as a learning opportunity as opposed to a shaming exercise. I'm wondering if we ever thought about, you often will hear me say that to folks I'm curious about, and then I give them that information.

I wonder what you think about, invite them in as a learning opportunity, not as I know more to get further with honey than vinegar, 

[00:40:33] Ellington Brown: Those words could not be truer. How does, activities like yoga and reading, gardening. How does all of those things contribute to your personal wellbeing and professional effectiveness?

And I'm, that question came up because of last week and we gonna meet but up. I'm sorry, the spotlight is on someone else right now, and I've got to deal with that. I can't deal with anything else until this is set. With all of these things that are coming up emotionally, they are draining.

We are humans and you're dealing with someone within trauma, they're reaching for you, and they may not know it, but they're actually pulling energy from you to help them lift themselves up out of this situation that they're in. So you're left drain. So how do you use these activities to. Pick up where you left off. I guess that's the lack for the lack of better. 

[00:41:44] Tina Garnett: Yeah, no, that's a great question. How do I refill my cup? And there's times where it's drain, it's Black History Month. I work for the organization who started Black History Month in Canada. We are busy. We are running last night I attended an event until nine o'clock.

I'm back at work at, at eight 30. So it's a lot. Oh. There she is. So we, that's her. I know I have her face on my phone, so I will have to call her back. I know I start every day in silence, in prayer. I'm also going through the seminary. And so I start every day in prayer. I have a prayer room in my house where I wake up.

I put on my headset, it is 17 minutes and 21 seconds of thank you, God. And that is the first thing I listen to in my day. Thank you, God. And then I move into affirmations and giving more thanks. I walk my dog, so I spend at least the first hour of my day in silence. And I have to, that's how I refill my cup.

I refill it with spirit, God, by every name and my own sense of ancestors and sitting in a space that I have my family's pictures around me, so I walk with them. So I refill it every day by starting out already full. And let me tell you, there's times where I'm like, ah, I don't need that 20 minutes today.

I am good. And you need the 20 minutes. Take the 20 minutes. So I start every day there. I also know has a yoga, certified yoga teacher that our bodies hold our emotions and women hold a lot of emotions in our neck and our back and in our lower back trauma is where we hold, is in our lower back. So as a class trauma counselor, I would do a couple yoga moves with our cl, with my clients emotions would be unhinged much easier to do therapy, right?

So when you learn the different ways as opposed to just the western ways, it's easier to do the work. So I do the same practices that I show other people to rejuvenate myself. And on Sunday is my day. It's my family day. I go to church, I go see my children and my grandchildren every Sunday. Their little faces from 16 to three fill me up, remind me why I do this, annoy me.

And then they're like, ah, Nana, I'm too busy. And so it's like once a week. So it's, if it doesn't give me joy, I don't want it. I left institutional life. It wasn't giving me joy. It was a great job. It paid amazingly well. But you can't cash, you can't trade money for joy, and I wasn't feeling joyous.

I make half of what I made there literally, and have 10 times as much more joy in my life. It is a place where little faces learning, cooking are like, Hey, miss T, we made you nachos. That level of generational, you can't replace that. So on the days where it's heavy, there are way more days that are filled with joy that keep it filled.

[00:44:56] Ellington Brown: I would hope so, because you are an individual that is balancing your professional and personal life and God knows whatever else that you, your fingers are into. So you've got all of these things up in the air and you're trying not to let any of these plates hit the ground, because if they do well, then that's the end of that one, and there's no picking that up and trying to put that back together again.

So how, as a mother and a grandma, how has your family experience influenced your perspectives on leadership and advocacy?

[00:45:36] Tina Garnett: They're very, huh. My family's very proud of me. My children are so proud of me. I have a beautiful relationship with my children. It has been them and I we are a triangle is how we would say our family code is the triangle. We can hold up any amount of pressure as long as we always stick together. And so we have stuck together my children and I who are now men, and so they're in their thirties, so that's a beautiful gift.

They worry. I remember when they called me a goat and I was highly offended, but I then I realized it was the greatest of all times or something and I was like, yeah, still no.

So we got to the old G and I'm like, okay, I'll take that one. So to see my children, who they had, they, the ones that I, that get sacrificed so I could go to school, so I could work, so I could go to school and work. So they're the ones that matter to me. My brother, before he passed, I was, I've he wanted to have a statue made.

I was like, that's a bit much. Sometimes it's not about knowing, telling people you put the dime in the meter, it's just about putting the dime in the meter 'cause a meter's expiring for someone else. Just plug the dime. Yeah. And knowing that you did a good thing. That's about changing the world. 

Yeah.

[00:46:50] Ellington Brown: I wanna thank you so much for spending this time with Rita and I, we really appreciated your comments and we covered a lot of topics such as your early influences and heritage. We also talked about your professional journey. This three decades. Worth of hard work and a lot of joy that's been produced during that time period.

Your role at Providence Coaching and training, we talked a little bit about that. Actually you did. You talked a little bit about the training and the core objectives there. We did touch on EDI at Sick Kids, and even though it was, the situation was around sick kids. That situation can be planted in so many other organizations.

Just slide it right on top. You wouldn't even have to jiggle it or anything for it to fit. It's just one of those things that fits it's systemic racism, I guess is another word for that. But we talked about your acknowledgement of your work at the Canada Senate. De we talked about decriminalizing the change in management.

And how that, how do we work with those methodologies to move forward? And we talked about educational pursuits, which is that was about your master's degree that you now had to get it because mom made you promise. And that was really a wonderful conversation and I, to be honest, I would definitely enjoy to have a part two.

And this would include that book that's awaiting for you to complete. Let's just say it's simmering. There we go with, it's where the book is right now. And so as soon as that book comes out of that. Roasting pan. We want to have an opportunity to talk to you then, but thank you so much for all the things that you and your boss are doing for the community and we at SpeakUP! International.

Could never thank you guys enough for all the good things that you do. Rita, did you wanna add something to that? 

[00:49:27] Rita Burke: I just wanna say to Tina Garnet, this has been a captivating conversation. You've poured oil and joy into our hour together, and I certainly appreciate everything that you have done we're currently doing in our community.

Thank you. Thank you. 

[00:49:49] Tina Garnett: Thank you both! Thank you. It has been a privilege and an honor.   

[00:49:56] Ellington Brown: Thank you for tuning in to SpeakUP! International! If you wish to contact Ms. Tina Garnet, please be prepared to submit your name, your email address, and the reason why you wish to contact Ms. Garnet at LinkedIn. Ms. Garnet has other social media accounts you can use to connect to her that will be listed in the description section on Spotify and other social media platforms. 

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