Norm McEwen | Ottawa Association of People who Stutter

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2015 Ottawa Race Weekend: Remembering Norm McEwen and Marie Poulos

Posted on: May 11th, 2015 by David Burton No Comments
Marie Poulos

Marie Poulos

 

Norm and members of the 2012 Race Weekend Team

Norm and members of the 2012 Race Weekend

The Ottawa Race Weekend is one of Canada’s premier race events and takes place every year near the end of May. The  above photo shows Norm McEwen with some of the 2012 team members from the Stuttering Treatment Clinic.

Standing tall as always among others, Norm was a long time advocate for people who stutter in Ottawa and across Canada.  For years he was a Board member of the Canadian Association of People Who Stutter (now known as the Canadian Stuttering Association CSA). He was also a founding member of the Ottawa Association of People Who Stutter (OAPWS).In addition, as the photo reflects, for many years Norm and other OAPWS members along with the team at the Clinic in Ottawa took part in the Ottawa Race Weekend under the banner of the Ottawa Hospital’s Run For A Reason campaign.

Team members raised money for the Marie Poulos Bursary Fund. This fund provides Ontario residents with financial assistance to take intensive and semi-intensive therapy programs at the Clinic. This Clinic is located at the Ottawa Hospital’s Rehab Centre.

This Year’s Ottawa Race Weekend

Once again members of our team will be running and walking in various events. But this year without Norm. Norm died unexpectedly last fall. To say that he was loved by many and that he is greatly missed is an understatement.

This year the Clinic’s “Let’s Talk About Stuttering” team is fundraising in memory of Norm. (more…)

The First Time I Met Norm

Posted on: May 11th, 2015 by David Burton No Comments

As many of you know, Norm McEwen died unexpectedly last fall. This year the “Talking About Stuttering” team at the Stuttering Treatment Clinic in Ottawa is fundraising in the 2015 Ottawa Race Weekend in memory of Norm.

I will always remember the first time I met Norm. Not an auspicious encounter for what later became a very close friendship. In 1997 Norm was attending a Canadian Association of People Who Stutter conference in Vancouver along with several other individuals from Ottawa including my future wife, Tania Kamienski.

I was living in West Vancouver at the time, in fact, two blocks from the hotel where the conference was taking place. Tania and I had gotten together the fall before in Ottawa and this was the first time she was visiting me in Vancouver.

Being a romantic, I wanted to impress Tania by greeting her at the hotel with a huge bouquet of flowers. I went to the reception desk. There was no Tania Kamienski registered. Tania had assured me she was attending the conference.  Had she lied? Was she laying me astray?

Fretting around the lobby, I heard a familiar sound. The sound of someone stuttering. I must be in the right place. The person speaking was, as I later learned, Norm McEwen. Being a very perceptive individual, I concluded he must be attending the conference and perhaps knew Tania.

(more…)