The first RCGS Fel­lows were named after 1929 and includ­ed peo­ple such as Fed­erik R. Bant­i­ng, who won the Nobel Prize for his co-dis­cov­ery of insulin; pio­neer­ing anthro­pol­o­gist and explor­er Dia­mond Jen­ness who lived with the Cop­per Inu­it in the North West Ter­ri­to­ries; and artist A.Y. Jack­son who was a notable mem­ber of the cel­e­brat­ed Group of Sev­en. 2015 Fel­lows includ­ed writer Mar­garet Atwood and Que­be­cois Explor­er Jean Lemire. David was named a 2016 Fel­low along­side Cana­di­an Muse­um Association’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor John McAv­i­ty, Cana­di­an Muse­um of History’s Pres­i­dent and CEO Mark O’Neill and Direc­tor Gen­er­al and Vice Pres­i­dent Jean-Marc Blais. Also named was the Cana­di­an Fund For Inter­na­tion­al Under­stand­ing through Cul­ture Chair Dr. Nel­ly W. Ng.

“I am deeply hon­oured and thank­ful for this recog­ni­tion. Geog­ra­phy, cul­ture, design and our envi­ron­ment have been a source of inspi­ra­tion for me since I was a child and it is great to see these val­ues shared amongst oth­er Fel­lows and cel­e­brat­ed by the RCGS. I look for­ward to work­ing per­son­al­ly and with the DE team to fur­ther the man­date of the RCGS.”
— David Oswald, DE Pres­i­dent

This announce­ment comes at a time­ly junc­ture in the his­to­ry of DE, where­upon the com­pa­ny is tak­ing var­i­ous big leaps:

(1) Launch­ing a new pub­lic out­reach ini­tia­tive with it’s ‘Cana­da Out­reach’ pro­gram focused on empow­er­ing youth

(2) Shoring up efforts on cli­mate change adap­ta­tion through nom­i­na­tion to the Unit­ed Nations CTC-N (Cli­mate Change Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre and Net­work)

(3) For­ti­fy­ing DE’s pres­ence in West­ern North Amer­i­ca and into Asia by set­ting Van­cou­ver as the new glob­al HQ

It is a new era for DE and we look for­ward to strength­en­ing our rela­tion­ships with exist­ing clients and part­ners and cre­at­ing new ini­tia­tives and projects with like-mind­ed orga­ni­za­tions who see the need for sus­tain­abil­i­ty solu­tions to the glob­al prob­lems we face. Being elect­ed to the Fel­low­ship of the RCGS brings with it respon­si­bil­i­ty to join a long lin­eage of indi­vid­u­als who have built the cul­tur­al foun­da­tions and in some cas­es phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture of Cana­da. The DE team is excit­ed about tak­ing on the chal­lenges that will come with this hon­our.

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