Senator Kim Pate speaking at NU for International Women’s Week

Nipissing University is marking International Women’s Week, this week, with a series of events centred on the important and timely theme of Transforming Justice.

Senator Kim Pate will give the keynote address, Why Women are the Fastest Growing Prison Population and Why We Should Care, on Wednesday, March 7, at 7 p.m. in the Nipissing University Theatre.

Senator Pate graduated from Dalhousie Law School in 1984 with honours in the Clinical Law Program and has completed post graduate work in the area of forensic mental health. She was the Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS) from January 1992 until her appointment to the Senate in November 2016. CAEFS is a federation of local societies who provide services and work in coalition with Aboriginal women, women with mental health issues and other disabling conditions, young women, visible minority and immigrant women, poor women and those isolated and otherwise deprived of potential sources of support. She is also a nationally renowned advocate who has spent the last 35 years working in and around the legal and penal systems of Canada, with and on behalf of some of the most marginalized, victimized, criminalized and institutionalized — particularly imprisoned youth, men and women.

She has developed and taught courses on Prison Law, Human Rights and Social Justice and Defending Battered Women on Trial at the Faculties of Law at the University of Ottawa, Dalhousie University and the University of Saskatchewan. She also occupied the Sallows Chair in Human Rights at the University of Saskatchewan College of Law in 2014 and 2015. Senator Pate is a member of the Order of Canada, a recipient of the Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case, the Canadian Bar Association’s Bertha Wilson Touchstone Award, and five honorary doctorates.

This year, Nipissing’s Gender Equality and Social Justice department has teamed with the office of Student Development and Services and the AIDS Committee of North Bay and Area (ACNBA) to offer IWW events at the university and in the community.

A full listing of events is available at www.nipissingu.ca/IWW. All events are free of charge and everyone is welcome.