Health Promotion

Special Award for Shelagh Rogers

Shelagh Rogers The Canadian Foundation for Women’s Health presents an annual award to recognize Canadian journalists for exceptional coverage of women’s reproductive health issues appearing in consumer newspapers, magazines and broadcasts across Canada. This prestigious award is presented at the Annual Clinical Meeting of the SOGC.

This year, in addition to the annual award, we are pleased to present a Special Award to Canadian journalist Shelagh Rogers for her extensive and sensitive on air coverage of a wide range of stories of importance to Canadian women. Since joining CBC radio in 1980, Shelagh has hosted a wide range of current events program including Morningside, This Morning, and currently Sounds Like Canada. She won an ACTRA Award in 1983 for Best Host/Interviewer.

As noted on CBC’s website: “Shelagh adds her voice to a number of causes including mental illness awareness, homelessness, and homeless youth training. She has been a literacy volunteer for more than two decades, continuing to make real Peter Gzowski’s dream of ensuring everyone in this richly blessed country has the right to literacy.” Mental health has now become her major focus and she is speaking up on this issue at major conferences and in church basements.

In June 2006, Shelagh had her hair shaved, showing support for a colleague with cancer while she raised money for cancer research.

Journalism Awards - 2008

Broadcast Category

Karina Marceau

RDI - PVP Monde Inc.

"Daughters of Gardeners"

“RAISING A DAUGHTER IS LIKE WATERING A NEIGHBOUR’S GARDEN” - Indian Proverb. India is sitting on a time bomb. The threat comes from within. Thirty-six million women are missing. The economic burden of dowries and the ancestral preference for boys make the birth of a daughter a shameful event. Ultrasound tests and abortions, medical acts which were supposed to represent progress for women, are instead being used against them. Trapped between tradition and progress, the second-most populated country in the world terminates girls before they are even born. Demographers do not hesitate to qualify the crisis of selectively aborting female foetuses as a real foeticide. Daughters of Gardeners, is a deeply moving and profoundly human documentary; an investigation of States where aborting girls has become a very profitable industry. This one-hour film follows the journey of a young Canadian journalist, in her quest to understand and document this demographic crisis, as well as its disastrous consequences on the entire Indian society; the inability of men to find wives; the increase in prostitution; the worsening AIDS pandemic; the kidnapping and trafficking of women; the advent of illicit marriages, etc. Unexpectedly poetic images for such a subject succeed in capturing the human element behind a reality that nonetheless appears quite inhumane. Avoiding the trap of perverse sensationalism, its very sensitive commentary acts like a veritable ray of sunshine cutting through a menacing sky. A film of hope, against all odds…

Honourable Mentions:

Jennifer Tryon, Vital Signs: HPV Series, Global National
Gaëlle Lussiaà-Berdou, Banque de sang de cordon ombilical au Canada, Première Chaîne de la radio de Radio-Canada
Avis Favaro and Elizabeth St.Philip , Nitroglycerine Patch, CTV National

Print Category

Marie-Eve Cousineau

Gazette des femmes Marie-Eve Cousineau

"Le corps dépotoir"

Published in January-February 2007, the news story entitled Le corps dépotoir attempts to answer the following question : do toxic products present in the environment play a role in the breast cancer development? Marie-Eve Cousineau is a freelance journalist and collaborator to the Gazette des femmes, a Quebec magazine published by the Conseil du statut de la femme that addresses women’s issues and feminist issues. The periodical, published every two months, issues about 25 000 copies.