Labour Education Centre staffer Steve Shallhorn retires this month after a long and impactful career in both the Labour movement and Climate Justice movement.
Steve started at LEC in 2012 and has built an amazing legacy in terms of impacts and results. He helped creat the Tradelinx construction pre-apprentice program and the nine-week Green Building Operator program, addressing climate change while preparing people for career opportunities in efficient building operations.
He worked with communities across Toronto to help build the Toronto Community Benefits Network bringing greater equity to the construction industry. He was also essential in bringing together labour, environmental organizations and academics to develop a Just Transition program for workers and communities – a plan to provide good jobs and economic growth through transitioning to a healthy-climate economy.
Prior to his work with LEC, Steve worked at Greenpeace for decades contributing to the early stages of the successful campaign in the 1990’s to lock up millions of hectares of temperate rainforest on the mid-coast of British Columbia.
His work on video documentation at sea of the Russian Navy dumping nuclear waste in the Sea of Japan led to a global ban on the dumping of nuclear waste in the world’s oceans in 1993. And he also worked to prevent Canada from purchasing nuclear powered submarines in the late 1980’s.
A person’s career impacts are often easy to write out in a few paragraphs, but the personal impacts that Steve has delivered to both our world, environment, the labour movement and his colleagues are too numerous to list in one place. They’ll live on in the legacy and impact of his work for future generations of workers and the public.
On behalf of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council:
Thanks, Steve.
