About the Author Dulcie McCallum, RN, LL.B, MFA

Dulcie McCallum was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal and Inclusion Canada’s President’s Award for her contribution as a special advisor on Canada’s delegation to the United Nations to negotiate the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. McCallum’s debut book of creative nonfiction, The Audacity of Inclusion, is an inspirational telling of the stories of lives lived of people with an intellectual disability that were foundational to the Convention.

 

Best known for her advocacy as a human rights lawyer for people labeled intellectually disabled, McCallum was the first woman appointed as the Ombudsperson for the Province of BC and Information and Privacy Commissioner for the Province of Nova Scotia.

 

Dulcie McCallum has written extensively on social justice issues in public reports, Op Eds, and, most famously for her investigative reports into systemic physical and sexual abuse at Woodlands Institution: The Need to Know Report, and abuse and confinement of Doukhobor children: Righting the Wrong.

 

Prior to being a lawyer. Dulcie McCallum was a Registered Nurse, during which time she worked as an inner-city Vancouver City Police Nurse, a Health officer in the BC Penitentiary and the Community Health Nurse on Haida Gwaii. She was adopted by the Haida Nation and given the Haida name, ts’ixuu jaad [seafood lady].

 

Holding a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Victoria, and a Registered Nurse degree from BCIT, Dulcie McCallum recently graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction from the University of King’s College (Dalhousie) in May 2022. Born in West Vancouver, British Columbia, McCallum now calls Halifax, Nova Scotia home.