{"id":23609,"date":"2019-04-18T13:00:09","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T17:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23609"},"modified":"2019-04-18T13:00:18","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T17:00:18","slug":"portraits-of-giving-recognizes-gonsalves-for-lifetime-achievement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/portraits-of-giving-recognizes-gonsalves-for-lifetime-achievement\/","title":{"rendered":"Portraits of Giving recognizes Gonsalves for lifetime achievement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she and her\nfamily first arrived in Aurora, Rosalyn Gonsalves quickly set to work making\nthe place she decided to raise her family a better place to live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly 40 years on,\nher decades of volunteerism within the community were recognized Thursday with\nher being named \u201cLife Time Giver\u201d in the 2019 Portraits of Giving photographic\nexhibition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spearheaded by\nRichmond Hill photographer Karen Merk, Portraits of Giving recognizes the\nvolunteer achievements of residents and community-builders spanning York\nRegion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Gonsalves, who\ncame to Canada from South America, was recognized this year alongside Michael\nCroxon, Benny Socia, Tina Tehranchian, Kelly and Mike Foley, Eric Tappenden,\nDaniela Hofmann, Gary and Gina Semeniuk, Patrick LeBlanc, Anita Smeskal-Donato,\nnewly-minted OPP Commissioner Tom Carrique (recognized by the York Regional\nPolice), Chief Deryn Rizzi, Kirk Kelly and Lauren Castelino.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was very honoured\nand humbled by the nomination made by Sandra Ferri of the Aurora Chamber of\nCommerce,\u201d says Ms. Gonsalves, whose roots with the Chamber run deep. \u201cThis was\ncertainly not what I was expecting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For over 20 years,\nfrom 1985 \u2013 2006, Ms. Gonsalves served as General Manager of the Aurora Chamber\nof Commerce. It was a time of significant development for the Chamber and\nduring her tenure she helped spearhead a number of firsts including the Aurora\nHome Show in 1987 and the Aurora Street Festival, both of which remain popular\nto this day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She first applied\nfor the job when her children were in Grades 1 and 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wanted to get out\nof the house,\u201d she says with a laugh and, perhaps, a degree of\nself-depreciation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, the\nChamber could offer wages of $4 an honour, but that didn\u2019t matter to her. They\nonly had $3,000 in the bank back then, no permanent home, but at the end of her\nterm as General Manager, their finances were more secure \u2013 and they had built a\nnew permanent home built with zero debt thanks to some canny fundraising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI thoroughly\nenjoyed what I was doing and I felt that there was a need in the community to\nraise awareness about what a Chamber could provide for businesses within the\nTown,\u201d she says. \u201cIn 1985, John West was Mayor of Aurora and [by nature of his\nposition] was sitting on the Chamber\u2019s Board as a non-voting individual. He\ndared us, \u2018You will never be able to do a home show,\u2019 and I said, \u2018Watch me.\u2019\nThe first Home Show was done in 1987 and the intent behind it was to bring\nawareness in the community to what businesses had to offer \u2013 and the Home Show\nstill continues 33 years later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Aurora Chamber\nof Commerce, however, was not Ms. Gonsalves\u2019 first foray into being a local\ndifference-maker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Little more than a\nyear after she, her husband George, and their two children settled into their\nnew hometown, people across Aurora soon learned her name as she went door to\ndoor collecting signatures for a highly successful petition to eliminate\nlong-distance charges on calls made from Aurora to Toronto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The resulting\npetition of 5,000 signatures was presented in the House of Commons by then-MP\nSinclair Stevens and, from there, it made its way through the CRTC to become a\nreality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just a few years\nlater, through her volunteerism with the Canadian Cancer Society, she met a\nwoman called Mildred Wickson. Ms. Gonsalves\u2019 daughter was set to be in a ballet\nrecital and she invited Ms. Wickson, who was instrumental in the establishment\nof the National Ballet of Canada, to come along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her guest was struck\nby the talent of a young ballerina playing the Snow Queen, sensing she might be\nthe right material for the National Ballet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMildred was very\ninstrumental in getting the young lady into the National Ballet,\u201d Ms. Gonsalves\nrecalls. \u201cUnfortunately, by the time the young ballerina performed in The\nNutcracker, Mildred had already passed away. However, she left in her will a\nbursary for this young ballerina from Aurora to continue and pursue her career\nat the National Ballet, which she did, and she is still a ballet instructor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Gonsalves has\nalso dedicated her time to supporting parent councils where her children\nattended school, has served on various councils at Our Lady of Grace Catholic\nChurch, the Friends of the Aurora Public Library, the Economic Development\nAdvisory Committee for the Town of Aurora, and currently volunteers a number of\nhours each month with the PROBUS Club of Aurora, the Newmarket Voice Festival,\nand the Optimist Club of Aurora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have been a\nmember of the Optimists now for seven years and I am always happy when I am\nable to attend their functions,\u201d she says, noting that for the past four years\nshe has taken special interest in the Optimists\u2019 scholarship program which\nprovides bursaries each year to students attending Aurora\u2019s five high schools.\n\u201cThe Optimists are a \u2018Friend of Youth,\u2019 so we try to support as many of the\nevents as we can in Town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVolunteering builds\na sense of community and belonging. It also helps to develop your creativity\nand open-mindedness to new ideas of affecting change. That\u2019s exactly what I\nfeel: it is building a sense of community and belonging and I think that is\nvery vital.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Portraits of Giving\n2019 is now on display in the Great Hall of the Regional Municipality of York\n(17250 Yonge Street, Newmarket). The portraits exhibition arrives in Aurora\nfrom June 24 \u2013 July 14 at Aurora Town Hall and from September 16 \u2013 October 1 at\nthe York Regional Police headquarters.<\/em><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When she and her family first arrived in Aurora, Rosalyn Gonsalves quickly set to work making the place she decided to raise her family a better place to live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/2019-04-18-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-68N","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 12:30:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}