Moosonee’s Dorothy Wynne honoured

Moosonee’s Dorothy Wynne has contributed more than her share of the more than 800 million hours Ontario residents volunteer annually.
For those efforts, she was a recent recipient of the Ontario Medal for Good Citizenship.
“I got the award for all the volunteering work I did with the Ontario Native Women’s Association at the community level,” said the voluntary board member of the Ontario Native Women’s Association. “I have been on their board since 1980, so it’s been 30 years.”
Wynne helped start up a local chapter of the Ontario Native Women’s Association in Kapuskasing in the mid-1970s.
“I got involved with the provincial organization in 1979-1980,” Wynne said. “It was the Kapuskasing Native women that started working towards establishing a Native friendship centre there.”
Wynne has also been involved with the local school board and volunteered her Native-language interpretion services with the local children’s aid society and the courts in Kapuskasing.
“If I got paid a penny for every time I interpreted, I would have a little nest egg,” Wynne said. “But when you’re a volunteer, you don’t look for that. You’re there to help your people.”
Wynne, who is currently involved with the Moosonee Native Friendship Centre and the MoCreebec Council of the Cree Nation, was among a group of 12 other people from across Ontario who received the Ontario Medal for Good Citizenship for their exceptional contributions to their communities during a Nov. 23 ceremony hosted by Lt.-Gov. David C. Onley at Queen’s Park.
“I’m only one of (the) women working hard like this across the province and to be recognized is great,” Wynne said. “It was quite an honour for me to be nominated by my president (Dawn Harvard, ONWA president). I’m not the only woman in the province that does this work, there are others.”
Wynne has devoted her career and volunteer efforts toward preserving the cultural teachings and traditions of the Cree Nation as well as advocating for improved and culturally sensitive health and legal services within Northern Ontario communities.
Wynne also continues to pursue traditional craftwork in her spare time.
“I’m making a white pair of moose hide slippers, home tanned,” Wynne said. “They’re for sale because a friend of mine wanted to buy a pair.”
The Ontario Medal for Good Citizenship was created in 1973 to recognize people who have made exceptional long-term contributions to the quality of life in the province.