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Ambrosie visits Brantford high school to talk Diversity is Strength

Senior Writer
@olearychris

Accustomed to addressing teammates, board members, team owners and presidents through his varied career, Randy Ambrosie had a different kind of audience in front of him on Wednesday.

The CFL’s commissioner spoke to about 40 high school students at Pauline Johnson Collegiate and Vocational School, in Brantford, about 90 minutes from the league office in downtown Toronto.

Ambrosie was joined by Hamilton Tiger-Cat Mike Daly and Ticats director of community partnerships, Kevin Matchett. They led a two-hour seminar on diversity, spurred by the success of the league’s Diversity Is Strength campaign that launched in August.

With a box of t-shirts for the students in front of him, Ambrosie recalled the unfortunate circumstances that saw the campaign come to life — first, the travel ban that the United States government tried to introduce earlier this year before he was commissioner, then the murder that took place at a protest against white supremacists in Charlottesville, South Carolina, in early August.

Behind the urging of CFL Senior VP, Marketing and Content, Christina Litz, Ambrosie approved the immediate launch of the t-shirts that weekend, before Saskatchewan hosted the BC Lions.

“We asked the teams playing in that game that day, the coaches and a lot of the team personnel to put these t-shirts on. The response from our players and coaches was overwhelming,” Ambrosie said.

“I can’t begin to tell you how cool it was. I was on the sideline for that game and to see our coaches and members of our teams wearing these t-shirts on the sideline so proudly and not just wearing them. It’s one thing to put a t-shirt on; it’s another thing when you can just feel how important it was to them. It became a national and international story overnight.”

Ambrosie’s reason for being there was twofold. The students in the grade 10 and 11 leadership class at Pauline Johnson are using the campaign’s slogan, Diversity Is Strength, as their theme for this school year. They’ll spend the year working on ways to embrace diversity and strengthen inclusion within their school and in Brantford.

The other reason ties into what the commissioner said about that feeling he had seeing players proudly wearing the shirts. It’s one thing to to wear a shirt with a great message. It’s another to take the next step and try to continue to make a difference.

“There’s a real opportunity for us to continue the message and part of how we do that is to be here with all of you,” he said.

“I think this is such a fundamentally important part of what makes Canada great. If we can encourage in all of you to embrace the idea of diversity, to become leaders on the subject of diversity, a subject matter expert that as I said that we are not. If we can encourage you to do that we can not only make the idea of diversity better but we can make our country greater and that’s important.”

“It’s a wonderful program because I love seeing how dedicated the commissioner is and the CFL staff are talking about it,” said Neal Stamer, a teacher at Pauline Johnson. Watching the t-shirt campaign launch this summer put the wheels in motion for him, even if he was still a few weeks out from having classes begin.

“In my class talking about it, we said that it’s almost the definitive Canadian thing. When a negative situation arises, a positive thing comes out of it,” he said.

“The Diversity Is Strength thing is just such a positive social message to meet something that started so negatively. It’s wonderful to see the pride that the CFL has in it and the pride that the students have talking about it, just being associated with it is a wonderful thing because it meets so many of our needs as well.”

Ambrosie spoke about the CFL’s history of welcoming players that weren’t receiving opportunities in the States — Bernie Custis, Chuck Ealey and Warren Moon — and how the game of football itself requires people of all shapes, skills and sizes to be great together.

The students then broke into smaller groups to talk about diversity, inclusion and acceptance with teachers. They considered what diversity meant, if they saw it at their school and how it could be better there and in their communities. (A side note: if you ever feel down about the direction the world is headed in, spend a couple hours listening to these kids talking about how they were raised and how they see their community.)

“It’s great to see that,” Stamer said. “It’s a different experience for them because they don’t often meet in that format. The expectation level was high for them and I’m glad that they stepped up and met that challenge, academically. I get to see them every day and I’m lucky to get to see them every day. I’m really proud that other people get to see what wonderful kids they are.”

The school’s namesake, Pauline Johnson, was a writer and poet born in Six Nations, Ontario, in 1861. Her poetry and public performances celebrated her Indigenous roots — her father was a Mohawk chief of mixed heritage and her mother was an English immigrant — while seeking peace between the British and Canada’s Indigenous peoples. Her work lives on in the school’s library, where Ambrosie spoke about diversity and equality on Wednesday.

“As (Mike Daly) properly pointed out, diversity is interesting all on its own, but it’s when you include others, when you bring others together from various backgrounds, you welcome them into your life and you make them feel included in your world, that’s when the magic starts to happen,” Ambrosie said.

“I think that’s one of the things we’ve done in the Canadian Football League that we’re most proud of.”