Vitusha Oberoi

"I tried to give the children of these immigrants a sense of their own history, which was not taught, which is still not taught, in schools."

As a teacher, Weinberger had always integrated special needs children in his class. “In many ways, now I feel they are accommodating me, a special needs teacher, into their ranks. I find they do not see me as disabled and they do not look at me any differently than they do any other teacher in the school,” he says.

Anita Dhawan showed spunk as a girl of 11 when she broke an ancient taboo by embracing a low-caste woman in her native India. Later, she challenged the patriarchal society of her hometown, who mistreated her widowed mother because in their eyes a woman merited no dignity after losing her husband. As an adult, the iconoclastic Anita smashed yet another barrier by forcing York University to recognize her foreign credentials, paving the way for her teaching career in Canada.