Fifty years ago in 1976, Norma Berti was the first to be recognized as Hamilton’s Woman of the Year.

Her story as the first woman steelworker in Canada to be elected to her local union executive set the tone for a night of celebrating the achievements of women in Hamilton at the 50th YWCA Women of Distinction Awards.

“I wanted to share this photo of Norma because sometimes we don’t always know whose shoulders we’re standing on,” said YWCA Hamilton chief executive officer Medora Uppal, while displaying Berti’s picture on the screen.

“But tonight is about remembering and honouring the women who helped build the path forward.”

Uppal highlighted in her speech the importance of recognizing and celebrating women’s contributions.

“For generations, women have strengthened our communities, they’ve built businesses, they’ve led movements, created art, advanced science, nurtured families and challenged systems,” she said.

“Too often that work happened quietly and without recognition.”

The gala, which aims to honour “women and girls whose leadership and impact create lasting change in Hamilton and Halton,” according to the YWCA website, took place on Thursday at the Hamilton Convention Centre.

Mayors of Hamilton and Burlington, Ont., Andrea Horwath and Marianne Meed Ward, gave a joint speech acknowledging previous recipients of the award in the audience. Horwath herself received the award in 1997.

Nine women awarded

Nine women received awards for their work in the Hamilton and Halton communities, including Kim Ritchie, who was the recipient of the Community Champion Award.

“Tonight marks 50 years the YWCA at Hamilton has been honouring women, a beautiful legacy of feminist existence,” she told the gathering of around 1,100 people in her speech

“But for 15 of those years, I wasn’t in rooms like this. I was on the streets of the city using drugs and surviving chronic homelessness.”

She said she set out to challenge those systems when she met her friend and collaborator, Rebecca Morris-Miller, who co-founded the National Overdose Response Service (NORS) with Ritchie.

Ritche said NORS has supervised over 20,000 calls and saved hundreds in Canada from drug abuse.

“And yet, in 2022, Rebecca died from an overdose in her home. Her death, a drug policy failure,” she said.

Ritchie spoke about victims of domestic violence, the increase of homelessness in women and in hate crimes across the city. 

“Our struggles may differ, but I know the same systems failing people who use drugs are the same systems failing our sisters now,” she said.

“If one of us is unsafe, all of us are unsafe.”

Here’s the full list of winners:

• Arts and Culture: Santee Smith, a Kahnyen’kehka artist from Six Nations of the Grand River. She’s McMaster University’s first Indigenous Chancellor and an Order of Canada appointee in 2023.

• Community Champion: Kim Ritchie.

• Education and Training: Karenna’onwe, Dr. Karen Hill. Also from Six Nations, Hill is a Mohawk physician and assistant professor at McMaster.

• Health and Wellness: Dr. Sheryl Green. She’s a clinical and health psychologist at the Women’s Health Concerns Clinic in St. Joe’s, author and assistant professor. She works with women and people assigned female at birth with their mental health across their “reproductive timeline” according to her bio.

• Innovation in Business: Dr. Katherine Gardhouse. Also a clinical psychologist, she’s the founder and CEO of eFIT mental health gym and Innermap.ai.

• Public Service: Gina Azulay. She’s a retired Hamilton police officer and advocate for victims and survivors of intimate partner violence.

• STEM and Trades: Jess Deyong. She’s the founder and creative director of dollHOUSE design + build, one of Hamilton’s only fully women-led construction firms.

• Young Trailblazer: Sarah Kalmanovitch, an advocate for educational equity and community engagement.

• Lifetime Achievement: Marisa Mariella. She has a long history of advocacy for mental health and suicide prevention.